Konrad,

I hope you change your mind and decide to stay and develop phex. You and the phex developers have had some very good and innovative ideas that we can all benefit from.

I wish the GDF didn't resort to the occasional threats and diatribes on various subjects. I have learned to ignore comments when they are over-the-top. Hopefully, you should do the same. I try to stay away from doing the same on most occasions - although I'm not perfect.

If you have ever had to work with a lot of developers, I'm sure you know that they can be pig-headed and convinced that it is their way or the highway. Most programmers that I have met (myself included) have a tendancy to think that they are gods gift to the programming and architectural design world. Extend that to a distributed Gnutella network where there is no active Linus Torvad or Ian Clarke type figure that can take original credit and rein in some extremes, and it explains why the Gnutella development community is more in-your-face than nurturing. Unfortunately, we all would benefit by less of the former and more of the latter.

Keeping the benefits of network effect in the Gnutella network development community is a constant struggle between self-interest and community interest. For the good of all, community interests generally has to take precident.

What happened in this situation is a combination of all these factors. The community is right that there is a problem with machine generated queries if done too single-mindedly. However, there is little immediate benefit from helping with your development (but longer-term gain) and the GDF was less than encouraging to your efforts. On my part, we appologize and wish that you would stay and help build the best and most diverse Gnutella network possible.

Thanks
-greg

LimeWire - Not just another pretty face.