Freenet version 0.7 Release Candidate 1 is now available for public testing.

Freenet is a global peer-to-peer network designed to allow users to publish and consume information without fear of censorship. To use it, you must download the Freenet software, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other operating systems. Once you install and run Freenet, your computer will join a global, decentralized P2P network. You will be able to publish and consume information anonymously, either through your web browser, or through a
variety of third party applications.

Freenet 0.7 is a ground-up rewrite of Freenet. The key user-facing feature in Freenet 0.7 is the ability to operate Freenet in a "darknet" mode, where your Freenet node will only talk to other Freenet users that you trust. This makes it much more difficult for an adversary to discover that you are using Freenet, let alone what you are doing with it. 0.7 also includes significant
improvements to both security and performance.

Freenet 0.7 RC1 can be downloaded from:

http://freenetproject.org/download.html

This release would not have been possible without the release of numerous volunteers, and Matthew Toseland, Freenet's full time developer. Matthew's work is funded through donations via our website (as well as a few larger sponsors from time to time). We ask that anyone who can help us to ensure Matthew's continued employment visit our donations page and make a
contribution at:

http://freenetproject.org/donate.html

The Freenet Project is also participating in the Google Summer of Code project this year, if you are interested in joining, please see the Summer of Code site as soon as possible:

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/