Why do you think that people buy LimleWire PRO? First they are given opportunity to use the free version. Then if they like it, and want to support its development they donate to the project by buying a licence for the Pro version.

There's nothing wrong there, and in fact all open-source projects are collecting money to finance their development or the hosting of their website, by using non-mandatory donation systems, or making campaigns to collect money, or by proposing featured merchandising.

LimeWire PRO is just that: a small donation to the open-source project, so that it can pay people working on it permanently, and that must still find a way to live, pay their rents, eat, have holidays some time (like you: would you accept to work without being ever paid? may be if it only consists in donating a small part of your time, but not if you work permanently).

So it requires a business: even the GNU Foundation performs some business to finance its activities (the foundation sells CDROMs and merchandising, and it can sell separate commercial licences for the software it has created and released to the public under the GPL or LGPL and that other commercial companies or editors want to use without binding their software or content to the GPL too; as well the GNU Foundation organizes conferences, sells educational courses, and earns from the books it publishes and that you can buy in regular bookshops, or directly from the Foundation).

You're dreaming about what a free software is, and why it can exist for your benefit. The principle of free software is that you benefit from it, and then can contribute too, either by participating to the project, or by donating to a fund that finances its development. You are not required to do it, but lots of people do that, because they don't want the project to be stopped and they do need the software, want corrections and enhancements. This is a very moral give-give trade between developers and users.

The difference between free software and proprietary software is that all is given to fit your needs, and you have the right to modify it. You can also distribute your modifications as well, and even request some money for this distribution, provided that you respect the original authors. You are free to try, and free to delete the software at any time. You are not tied nominatively to another person or company as soon as you acquire its licence. The economical model is differentfrom commercial softwares but it's still a business.

Suppose you take everything wihout donating, and everybody does the same, then no free software would ever exist because there would be nobody to create it, and nobody willingto distribute it.

This is not a scam; unlike the many that have florished that collect moeny without participating to the project, and that abuse their customers with falsified trademarks and copyrights, and without even crediting the true developers of the software they distribute (and often pollute as well by integrating adwares and spywares which are not even present in any source...).

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You misread my post. Im talking about the users who are paying for a fake/scam instead of getting the real thing. No need to get defensive on me. People are being mislead and conned into thinking its be legal to download if they paid for the program, and, all Im saying its not. Whether you pay or use the pro and dont give me the high and mighty excuse about supporting open source. P2P HAS always been free up until Napster folded then all the greedy programers decided to charge users for a pro version which is a joke because its STILL a P2P app and STILL does the samething as a free P2P app. We all connect to the gnutella network. NOT Limewire. People are getting confused about WHAT THEY GET if they pay and all Im saying is, you get nothing different in a pro than you would with a basic. I dont care what features they add or take away, why should I pay or anyone else for a pro version just to download the same files for free? Its called trying to get rich off P2P.

added: and so far from what I can see on here, the scam sites are making ten times more money then Limewire. If they kept it free, they'd be no need for scam site.

Your immediate above assumption is completely wrong !!!

Scam sites do exist as well for free programs that have no official paid versions, even the most prestigious ones.

You'll find paying scams for the GNU C compiler, for The GIMP, for FrostWire (see www.frostwire.com, the original, versus www.frostwire.org, the scam, as well as this thread in these online forums: Scam version of FrostWire).

Scammers are even repackaging and renaming commercial applications as well, also abusing their licences. These are criminals that make illegitimate money by stealing on the work of others, and even stealing money from their "customers" by not providing the promissed additional service, or by charging them multiple times, or by stealing their identities for other usages.

In addition, if they provide you with some software, the software is too much often hacked and filled with trapdoors and spywares, or have been hacked to much that they do not perform some basic functions or will crash more often than the original app, as these hacks were not tested...

Scammers are not programmers, they just want to make money quick (and yes may be they are earning more money, only because they don't spend anything in the development process and they don't want to pay people to do their job). So their activity is often linked to other similar ones like spamming for "promoting" their "product", or subscribing to advertizing networks (that they include rapidly in the hacked installers of the programs they distribute, often without having to modify lots of things in the program itself).

Finally, scammers have something common with spammers: they don't reveal their true identity (their only known identity is their domain name on Internet, all the rest is unverifiable or inaccessible). They use fake company names, publish no verifiable street address, you won't find them in any yellow pages, their business name is not registered, and the only contact you can have is with some email address in the same domain name as the web site which is promoting their spew.

Even the domain name registration contains fake addresses and names. If one seeks about those address, you may also see that they have used stolen identities. When this is discovered, those domain names are parked by their hosting company, the doamin names resolve to another "no-reply" web site, and the ISP does not even receive any complain from the scammer who does not want to be identified. There are tons of examples of that (and really millions of domain names that have been parked by their ISP until the end of the yearly registration period, due to identity theft)

Fake domain names do exist because they were registered for a very small yearly fee, using stolen credit card numbers. This works often because the bank accept the payment without verifying well the identity. Sometimes the identity is real being associated correctly with the credit card number, but the people did not notice in their bank billing that their credit card was used for such small purchases (many people don't remember exactly what they bought, and do not control precisely their billing, especially for small purchases.) In addition any transaction form in their website is NOT secured by a SSL channel, meaning that the form will not be processed by a host in a secured domain, as this would require them to proove their identity to get a security certificate (so the transaction is not performed by a trustable bank: by filling this form, you give unlimited and uncontroled access to your credit card info directly to the scammer). There will be no PayPal payment offer as well (PayPal is a trustable bank as it has a wellknown and easily verifiable identity).

Also often, the bank accounts were created by spammers/scammers in fiscal paradises for the time of the transaction. If you track the bank, you'll find amny examples in the Comoros Islands, in Nigeria, or in small and poor islands in the Pacific. (If you are not convinced, visit for example the official governmental website of the Comoros website: there are local laws that legitimate this type of business, for the national interest, and they refuse all international investigation for suspect transactions). The address shown in their billing is also wrong, or do exist but was selected randomly in white pages in random countries and is not connected to the debited credit card.

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lol, verdy, that where i stop reading your post. you famous for a long word post. but i do know you made very good point.

Guys

GGT got taken in by a scam site, a site that seem to promise him everything he could ever want (forget the "too good to be true" factor ).

Now take a look at the picture below, can anyone honestly say that if they were game playing internet novices that they would not be taken in by such a site. The action man alone causes the pulse to quicken and the heart to beat faster. Man, I can't wait for that adrenaline rush.

Scam site are using more sophisticated advertising techniques to catch the "not so internet savvy" among us, and GGT just didn’t stand a chance (remember, he doesn’t speak or understands “geek” ) especially as it would never occur to him, and hundreds like him, to do a bit of reaserch into the site before parting with his money.

So people, in the face of such obvious advertising advances and novices not taking the time to check before parting with their cash, I see a bleak future of senior forum members forever more explaining the facts of internet life to angry novices.




UK Bob

Attached Images

action site.jpg (71.8 KB, 71 views)

No, it didn't, - some of the packages are just missing the GPL notice.

No, they weren't. They were moved but not removed.

I have followed this thread with interest, and whilst the thread seems to have vered this way and that ..... On the subject of Frostwire/Limewire I firmly support Trapjaw and the Frostwire team, and while no one really knows, I don't think, what the fate of Limewire will be, the fate of the Limewire tradition is in safe hands.

I have been surprised by verdyp's condemnation of Frostwire. This is a part of the "about frostwire" credits

"Our most sincere thanks go to LimeWire LLC and its current and former developers who chose to make their client open-source and without whom this project would not have been possible:"

That looks like a perfectly acceptable credit to me and is followed by the names of the Limewire Developers.

This From Frostwire's Website:

"We are busy building a website and creating a new design for the FrostWire Gnutella client. Since LimeWire is a registered trademark we cannot distribute the client under its old name. For that reason, we are looking for creative p2p fans that would like to create skins, design logos or websites. However we are also trying to get more people working on the Java core, the interface and the C++ windows installer (based on GnucDNA and NSIS). If you are interested in maintaining LimeWire's legacy get involved!

FrostWire and LimeWire
We are trying to maintain good relations to the LimeWire project. The FrostWire team (all of whom are still members of the LimeWire open-source community) regrets LimeWire's decision to start filtering content on Gnutella. However, we will continue supporting LimeWire development and do not wish to make fundamental changes to the LimeWire core itself. FrostWire will not break with LimeWire's design philosophy.

FrostWire however, will never offer a PRO version. The FrostWire project will always remain strictly non-profit and free of any bundled software, including any ads or nags."

I think that is perfectly clear to anyone that Frostwire is totally indebted to Limewire and acknowleges the fact. As for the exact legality of the trademark and whatever, I find it slightly ironic that this should be an issue.

later!

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Thats YOUR opinion. I think differently and will stand by orginal post.

I did not say anything about the Frostwire website, this is irrelevant.

What I said was about the Frostwire distributed software, which currently comes without the credits required by the GPL. (for example the unilateral change in its resource bundles).

Remember that the Frostwire software may be distributed by other means than the Frostwire website alone.

So it is not enough to give credits on the Frostwire website, because this is not part of the distributed software itself. The GPL is clear: any copy must be provided along with all credits and copyright notices, and with a copy of the GPL licence.

So Frostwire must be modified to be conforming with the GPL licence (and this can be done easily by reintegrating the copyright notice and credits in the resource bundles).

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To be honest, I think that Limewire does not fully respect the GPL as well. The GPL says that the software must also give access to the copy of the licence and to the copyright notices within its "about" functionality.

Several months ago I submitted a change for the About box in Limewire, so that it would contain selectors to display an additional "Credits" page and a "Licence" page. This change was reverted, but not justified.

I accept the fact that the Licence page is not required in the software made by LimeWire LLC itself because it is the copyright holder and LimeWire can choose to apply any licence it wishes, but this is problematic for those parts of the software that were made by other people and that are bundled in LimeWire.

The relevant part of the GPL is the "How to apply the GPL to your software" section which exposes some ways that are considered sufficient to make the distribution conforming with the licence under which the software is published.

For translations, there is a problem: there are many contributors, but it is not clear which licence they apply to their work. But for now, no translator has requested it, and then the copyright notice that is displayed on the Limewire.org website where the translation mailing list address is shown becomes the default copyright: translations sent to the list are donated to LimeWire LLC, under the terms of the GPL.

That's why I think it is important to give an access to the GPL in the Limewire software itself, and to include a credits page (the list of all past translators is kept to allow such references, and there's a page on the Limewire.org web site where they are available, unless those translators said they wanted to remain anonymous or listed only though a pseudonym).

However another way to conform the software with the GPL is to include those information in the installer rather than in the installed software, because it is a required step before using the software:by pressing OK to install the software, the user explicitly agrees with the terms of the displayed licence.

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Sorry bro but I find that hard to believe. Like I said, Bearshare/Limewire had no pro versions when they started out. I bet my bottom dollar that once they make it big, if and when they do because I'll be one of the few that wont switch to Frostwire when the time comes, they WILL indeed comeout with a Pro version to make money off it. So much for free, open source.

Fair enough, but the first part of my post that you quoted came from the "about Frostwire" under Help in Windows, or Frostwire in Mac, which comes with the software. I am obviously missing some finer point of your argument here but this seems, as I said, quite good enough to me

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May it has been modified in a recent distribution of the Frostwire software. If so, that's good.

The last time Ichecked the Frostwire ressource bundle, the reference to Limewire copyright had been removed from the Frostwire version.

And the last time I received an update for the German translation of the bundle, it was a bundle edited by a german contributor from the Frostwire distribution, with all comments and empty lines removed, and without the LimeWire copyright. I had to restore manually all the removed data (and unchange all the modified references to FrostWire) before applying the very few effective updates that it really contained.

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all you have been arguing about is verry interesting, but doesn't it just come to this: frostwire does not care about the GLU license as long as LimeWire doesn't seu them or anything or even gives them a warning, and don't you think if YOU guys know about frostwire being a clone, then the limewire devolopers know aswell?

So far I have to agree with GGT. I purchased a subscription through www.gamedownloadaccess.com. Are you saying that I did not need to purchase a subscription from this vendor and that I should just go to "Limewire" and download a copy of their program? Is that what people mean when they say they have been scammed?

I have a Mac with OSX and purchased this for my daughters to rty different games. I was not looking for "ILLEGAL and FREE GAMES"! I thought this was a legitimate games website.

I have tried to download games without any success. I am not sure if I need to only look for a certain type of download. For the past 36 hours I have been looking for "The Sims 2" for OSX and everything I have downloaded has been crap. I'll take anything Sims right now just to see if this process really works.

Lastly is Limewire and the fact that people are downloading games reallu ILLEGAL. Can someone answer these questions for me? My other questions regarding file types have not been answered so far. Thanks in advance.