So sad, but true humand behaviour. It is called GREED.

Don't you people get it? We all need to make money.

Vinnie does not want to give you the choice to not have his creation Bearshare (which must have taken a lot of time to develop) not phone home, with whatever information he thinks he, his present or his future sponsors want.

Yes, Bearshare is a bloody good Gnutella net client. A lot of people like it, a lot more like to use it more often, but are scared.

But nobody would want to pay any or much money for it, would you??? I wouldn't.

So stop bugging him. Bodhi, he cannot answer your (very well written) question, about the choice of update.
He doesn't want it, but cannot publicly say it. It would be so easy to do.
Normal business tactics, keep them talking and discussing but also keep your customers using your goods.

JD

PS: Is it maybe possible to have a firewall block Bearshare sending these packets to this 'certain address'??? (ATGuard is flexible enough to possibly do this).