Once the Foundation is the main organization - sometime post-launch, then this will be the case I expect. Currently Maidsafe is a private company and there are things that they can’t share for legal reasons.
Hey, so, this still happens even if you build with the network-contacts feature?
I agree, but also we must realise that listening to every conversation or seeing every communication will only kill a project like this. There just has to be some things that are happening commercially and I am sure there would be many issues with folk communicating to folk we are trying to speak to as well. Good or bad motives aside, it makes little sense.
In terms of development it is all 100% open source code, there is an internal stack and discourse set of tools and these are always a dilemma, especially discourse where we discuss larger design topics. I would like I tall to be 100% open, but on occasion there are folks learning or making mistakes they don’t want public, I don’t care personally but some will. On internal channels there is much less politically correct and perhaps there is even more brutal looking language, it’s not personal or brutal, but we don’t need to worry or get caught up in many side conversations and so on.
I suspect any project that has commercial parts must also have some private space, the key is making public what we can when we can and not delaying too much, but then of course you have marketing and pr, which is a real thing we all do. i.e. do surprises and make surprise announcements.
Nobody will get this right.
I hear you Mark, but I am not as worries we are heading off a cliff with some set in stone drop dead date, but I am really in favour of having some goals for sure. I cannot see the network being launched with not enough testing, it won’t happen, but there are ways to force forward motion and we need to force this.
I think a clear focus is vital and the team internally are really getting to that mindset. It’s really important we do this right, but also important we don’t sit back and just wait. So we need this pressure and focus to know where we are properly and also what we can fix quickly. I hope to see much fixed quickly here. It’s a simpler system and a better system to get to launch.
Cheers Mark, I will be on and off for a while yet, but will help where I can. I see the internal discussions and the forum discussions and it makes me sad the team are trying so hard, but it’s currently not so visible (correctly) to the community. It will all change very soon and I think we will all benefit immeasurably
Thanks for acknowledging the reality of these issues and some reassurance, but even this I have to be skeptical of now because it isn’t in your hands really.
Given how we and I have been treated I’ve lost confidence in the project based on what we are told and not told versus what we see and experience.
I never thought I’d be saying this weeks before a launch, or picture myself putting my hands over my eyes as we do so but that’s where I am and I’m fed up of keeping quiet about so many issues.
Without a bunch of external Devs flexing the network and it’s API it’s still not correct to call it a beta IMO.
At the same time I still hope you and the whole team can make it what we all want.
All we can do is fight hard to make the network a reality. The fight is on 
And I can read about that feature somewhere? I did not know of such a feature.
Apologies, I don’t think we have it documented as such, but, you can build safenode with --features network-contacts and that is what makes the --peer argument optional. Without that feature enabled, the node will not try to retrieve the peer list from the file on S3.
Thanks for that.
Is there something to add in the keys now that are needed? Or do i still need to set env vars
And did the keys change with this network?
You still need to set the environment variables representing the keys, at build time. The keys will be the same at least until launch, or possibly beyond. I don’t know if there will be a new set generated, or we will continue with these beyond launch.
I would think the genesis keys will be changed since we need a new genesis event on release