On 1/23/23, A Tor Minion <atorminion@torproject.org> wrote:

In case it affects you as you are still running your relay or bridge on Tor 0.4.5.x: the 0.4.5 series is going EOL

Yet still no one bothers to talk about what the censorban effects of that would be upon the current use, and the future development and use, of some P2P and other types of applications and protocols over tor's onions, and thus upon the users and future users of them.

currently still 760 relays [running 0.4.5.x]

Notably, ~64% [~493] of those 760 are running 0.4.5.10 or prior, and ~77% [~382] of those 493 are running exactly 0.4.5.10. Thus clearly there is a movement to continue support v2 onions in as much of an up to date with tor fashion as they can while still preserving v2 capability. v2 flags can be broken down similarly. Omg, gasp, how can it be, such Valiant Rebels against Authority! "We" must Smash them!, says the Tor Project Incorporated. Well, pehaps those 493 relays may be freely, even rightly, choosing to resist, by continuing their support for v2 onions and all its applications for users, including bidirectional 1:1 IPv6 mapped transport (UDP, TCP, bittorrent, chats, P2P, cryptocurrencies, voice/video protocols, file and storage clouds, etc) over tor OnionLand, via the amazing OnionCat plugin as needed, and by continuing to run v2 HSDIR servers, and by being brave DirAuths against such Authority that they will continue to sign over v2 capable relays, so as to let them live freely without such arbitrary persecution, even perhaps moreso in the case of the v2 capable non-exit cloud. As searchable by "OnionCat" on lists... TPO's arbitrary and unecessary ripping v2 function out of tor versions newer than 4.5.10 would permanently disenfranchise users from running the entire universe of all the IPv6 capable applications [1] over tor onions that depend on v2+OnionCat to run. And it will permanently prevent anyone from developing or porting any such novel and interesting applications for and to tor onions in the future. That's bad, and is especially harmful to such potentials considering how the Internet is now tending and preferring to develop decentralized P2P applications to help resist, route around, and extinct central tyrannies... some of those apps would certainly not be able to run over tor unless plugged into v2+OnionCat. The world has not, is not, and won't be solely unidirectional TCP... the bidirectional, mesh, UDP, broadcast, IPv6, embeds, etc still do and will exist, and apps do and will depend on them. Does Tor Project Incorporated really desire to foreclose on some such interesting possibilities over tor's onions. Also bad is Tor Project's blanket "security" claim FUD as an excuse to remove v2, when it is properly users that should get to decide whether the actual differences between v2 and v3 onions features really apply to their use cases, threat models, and acceptable tradeoffs for the apps they choose to run over tor's onions in OnionLand. Note clearly that Tor Project still refused to post an unbiased technical comparison table wiki between v2 and v3 and OnionCat for the benefit of users to consult, nor did they post such on a blog or forum or list, nor speak on the application-limiting future that v3 would represent, they just handwaved "new" and "security" memes, and claimed "support cost" when in reality TPO gets paid $Millions to support users and applications. As before, Tor should have, and still should, modularize the functionality for v2 onions HSDIRs relays and clients, and then push that out to the community to enable, support, and operate that module option as they so choose... a dedicated v2 cloud of sorts. For the Valiant Rebels, and should Tor still refuse to modularize, 4.5.10 would be the last of their official releases to support v2. It's also an opensource software, protocol, and operation that can be freely forked into a new project that may also venture to address Tor's other big problems as well. After 25 years of the Tor elephant, it's time for all sorts of new projects to compete in the overlay space anyway. For one, did you know that you can overlay the GNURadioRF space with encrypted random transports... have phun :) "Tor Stinks -- NSA, known since before 2012" https://github.com/rahra/onioncat/ https://www.onioncat.org/ https://dist.torproject.org/tor-0.4.5.10.tar.gz https://dist.torproject.org/tor-0.4.5.10.tar.gz.asc https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/tag/?h=tor-0.4.5.10 30b10a30ced563382c09bb290d0568932ca98b03 cached-consensus:client-versions 0.4.5.10 cached-consensus:server-versions 0.4.5.10 May all do well in countering the various adversaries of freedom. #FreeAssange [1] And today's IPv4 applications that also depend on v2+OnionCat transport features, since the world is porting them to IPv6 and soon abandoning IPv4. [CC's for inclusion, censors abound]