In the recent weeks the discussion in the gnutella-developers-forum about the automated searches generated by Phex has really heated up. Here is what I had to take in:

Vinnie (of Bearshare) was as arrogant as I expected it:
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The "re-search" feature must be eliminated or changed to a MAXIMUM of
one additional query per 30 minutes TOPS!

This is not open to debate!

Greg? Speak up, boy, lest these upstarts destroy what we have built.
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A guy who calls himself "Brown Tiger" and claims to develop his own client is even more direct:
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My client is almost ready, it has features to take
BearShare and Lime, and you would not like what I do
to your searches or search result I return, or even
what would happend to your incoming... I guarantee you
this this.

Tiger
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Greg Bidson from Limewire in contrast seems to be reasonable and intelligent:
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Konrad,

You definitely should be given enough time to develop a viable methodology.
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But all in all the tone is rather harsh and most developers seem to be incredibly intolerant and arrogant. I was really surprised by Vinnie who claims to "have built"(!!!) the gnutella network. But I don´t want to be forced to develop Phex under this pressure and I can´t even be sure to ever satisfy the needs of the major developers. If Bearshare and Limwire really implement features to render Phex unusable it will be the end of this software.

I was wondering what would happen if some commercial developers suceeded in monopolizing gnutella, but I didn´t expect to see this so soon. They have the power and they are willing to use it. If things don´t go their way they are "not open to debate!".

Fine. Perhaps I will develop Phex further and add tons of features to disguise it and make the blocking of it completely impossible. I can think of about 5 ways to do this spontaneusly. But this wouldn´t be the software I wanted to provide.

This is the reason why I will quit the official leadership in the development of Phex. If someone wants to get this position, just let me know and I will transfer the administrative sourceforge rights to you.

Regards,
Konrad Haenel


Thanks:

Thanks to all the users and developers who made Phex what it is now. The support was overwhelming and I really got that enlightening "open-source-experience". Thanks also go to sourceforge, I wonder how they can provide all these services for free. Respect goes to Greg Bidson from Limewire who tried to find a solution for the problem instead of simply threatening me. Special thanks go to Alexander Werth, Gregor Koukkoullis (I hope I spelled that right), Marks Saltzman and Hael Lorande. And very special thanks go to all those gnutella user who actually provide ressources and files to the network, I think you are the ones who really "built" it.


If you want to read the whole discussion you can do so here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf