Radical Net programmers are committed to building a wholly anonymous, virtually untraceable way of communicating and trading files online. Chief among these is Freenet, an open-source project viewed by many as the ultimate inheritor to Napster's original promise of free online file swapping. For the first time, the largely volunteer effort has hired a paid staffer, Swedish student Oskar Sandberg, who will get $2500 for two months of work, using funds from an online donation pool. Developers hope that allowing one of their members to work full time on the project will help the completion of a new release that finally will make Freenet faster and easier to use.