Gnutella has a problem
 

Dear developers,

there is a problem. Let me describe my personal dissapointment with Gnutella: I collected
voices from different developers and have spoken it out (I prefer to speak out problems
to solve them). Now I wonder, many have been complaining about Vinnie, Bearshare and
Limewire... but many stay silent. Well, I don't have a own client and it's not my problem
anymore. But it's very inefficient and insincerely IMHO to complain behind the lines and
officialy speak 180° different. Of course, it's not easy to stand against the commercial
pressure and the so called "GDF big players". Also it's human to keep good friends with
everyone and complain behind closed doors not to annoy anyone you might need later, but
is this a tactic to solve real problems?

Perhaps you didn't like how I have spoken up, too much "thunder and lightning"? Do you
still think Bearshare-Limewire-aliance will change anything if you ask them with chocolate
and cream on top? We allready did this for months. The gnutella civil war (mainly
originated from Vinnie's bearshare.net IMHO) is about one year old. It's an old problem,
with Limewire following in Vinnie's steps it's not geting smaller, it's only getting worse.
You know me as a pro Gnutella speaker for months. I have put so much energy and time
here in Gnutellaforums and other places, building up something to help new developers,
answering emails, writing articles, reviewing source code, developing new ideas or
promoting free clients like Xolox and PEERanha.... I was nice and friendly for months,
but I can't look anymore on Gnutella and watch silent while it suffers. I see the problems
inside Gnutella for about a year now and it's slowing Gnutella down. There is time for
diplomacy and there is time for honesty.

BS/LW feel comfortable in their current position and clustering, they have a kind of
control, a small good market share, make some bucks, giving each other justification
and compliments for their work and have some developers in their "Gnutella Developer
Forum". They making some steps forward. No, "Ultrapeers" is not the big glory alone,
more or different concepts to increase availability and usabilty are needed IMHO,
without an eat-this-or-die behaviour to other clients. Other clients
also don't cluster/block e.g. Bearshare away because it allows freeloading with a
click of a button (which is much more "unhealthy" IMHO).
Didn't some of you say "there is something that has to be changed to make Gnutella
more attractive and increase technology"? I doubt, without asking for changes there
would be any changes in the next months.
Meanwhile current situation is causing increasing dislikes among developers. Development
is slow, less support for new developers and a existing kind of GDF high society and
lobbying is not making Gnutella more attractive. Nothing is regulated, what is not
fairly regulated.

Don't forget the unfriendly voices of fans from different clients, badmouthing one of
your fellow combatant and religious trolls in forums doesn't cause a friendly tendency
or more cooperation. No, it's anyoing for users and devlopers which spend a big amount
of their spare time for free!

I don't think LW is the big selfish evil, but even LW is not a saint, especially with
the increasing Bearwire business alliance. Afisk, I do appreciate you wrote an email
to Xolox now after 7 months, maybe you should have searched conversation with other
developers in the past? You know I tried with several PMs to talk with you, but with
a lack of communication I have seen LW drifting away into Vinnies model of spyware and
clustering. In my honorable opinion Bearshare and Limewire have to change (especially
the closed doored GDF lobbying) or Gnutella development has to be splitted! It's allready
happening, many developers outside the GDF and godXBlue (PEERanha) left Gnutella,
who's next?

Okay, I'm doing a strong "rebellion course" against Bearshare and Limewire. Because I
really believe, Bearshare and Limewire have to change to a more open and democratic
politics - or accept an outsider handling when they come with spyware, clustering or prorietary
extensions. Of course this is not the only problem with Gnutella, but only once the
dislikes are eliminated a more constructive cooperation can begin.
There is one important thing I care a lot: Don't waste your time with fighting, better
ignore the GDF and loud PR now and break free, impove your code and make Gnutella
or a different P2P system a better place, support new devlopers. Build or use a good
free client! I believe a constructive bundling of creative minds is better and brings
more than selfish ideas or anger. It's a wild guess, but giFT or the next Xolox will
leave the slow GDF back in dust again. Just by using a free client you're fighting back!

Let me explain my idea of a Gnutella or different P2P network again: it's fair, friendly,
efficient and in peacefull cooperation, where the benefit of a better network will be
for every client and for all users.

Happy sharing and bye, Moak

Whew...
 

Well, i could copy your message and post it again here - or i say i agree to you!

I don't care if someone thinks i'm an idiot because i'm agreeing, but i've seen MUCH in my life, and i've heared many developers, agreeing in long discussions that the problem is that BS rules the GDF while it isn't a 100% free client.

Some other models are made, some other Protocols are begun - nothing changed, it seems as if many developers are like ... hm ... parrots for example: stupidly repeating what vinnie&co doing...

Why don't you all say what you're thinking? come on, tell me what you think! Be honest!

[WARNING: TANGENTIAL, INCOHERENT RANTING AHEAD]

Well, I think that Gnutella is carpy without ultrapeers. You should check out Direct Connect; the admins exort evil, czar-like power over the users (I was banned from my favorite hub recently because I accidentally shared an exe file), but the restrictions keep the hub free of leechers and generally make everyone happy. Wouldn't it be nice if you could actually find the rare file you were looking for on Gnutella? Well, if there was a 5GB minimum share to access the network, I'll bet you could. ;)

LimeWire is an excellent step in the direction of DC, with its freeloader blocking and ultrapeers; I run FreeWire myself. BearShare, however, is corroding the Gnutella network; because of the BearShare black hole, the only way you can get into its part of the network is to have a seperate cache for BearShare and all other clients. No client I know does this.

A perfect Gnutella network would have everyone using minimum shares except for the people who are OK with the idea of freeloaders sucking their bandwidth. Ultrapeers would be the norm, but there would also be connections to other clients in case an important ultrapeer shut down. Oh, and clients would be able to discriminate on the basis of filenames shared (e.g., .vbs files would get you kicked from the network), there would be a common chatroom that echoed across the network, and BearShare-like black holes would be nonexistent.

Dream on, Ashi.

I'd just like to disagree with you on a couple points.

There isn't so much of a Bearshare black hole as there is a LimeWire black hole. Bearshare, as I have heard, still connects to other clients even though it does prefer other Bearshare clients. LimeWire on the other hand, doesn't seem to connect to many other clients at all unless you're an ultrapeer.

With a perfect Gnutella network, there would be no talk of blocking freeloaders and nobody would be required to share anything. I don't believe in shutting out freeloaders. They're just as much a part of the network as anyone else. Everyone's gotta start building their library somewhere.

Also in a perfect Gnutella network, there would be ONE client encompassing ALL great features from ALL clients, communication on the network would use a LOT less bandwidth, and firewalls would accept and pass Gnutella traffic by default.

I've heard the exact opposite. But, then again, we don't have the BearShare source code, so we can't compare the two.

In my humble opinion, freeloaders are mainly people who don't WANT to share their files. If you really don't have enough for a minimum share, just grab some files off of Gutenberg. I think it's greed that's the problem, not lack of files. And if you don't share your files, you're just using up bandwidth.

Amen to that. :)

Well, that's where we disagree. IMO, it's everyone's right not to share if they don't want to (or can't for some reason). And I don't agree with treating these people any different on the network just because that's the choice they made.

Hey Moak,

I know you put a lot of effort in here and I can understand you completely. But to be honet: I think this is just how business works. LW and BS as the strongest providers for clients stake of their claims and maximize their business.

I completely agrre with your post, but I think there is nothing you/we can do about it. I mean all you can do is to appeal to BS/LW to change back but that is all we have.... and thsat is not much compared to business.

Felix

ehm .. the last post is mine Moak ... I forgot to log-in

The problem comes down to greed, without greed Gnutella would be great!

Who the hell wants to contribute source code and personal time to a network where Vinnie and LW make all the money from it? I DON'T!

We don't need BearShare's code to share, we don't need LimeWire's code to share, we have free open spam free code and should use it and ban the rest!
All the Vinnie problems would disappear in a minute as he tried to form his own private network, and LW would file chapt 7 the next day.
Everyone else would jump on the first open source client they could find, and a lot of people would start contributing to the source code base in short order.

Save Gnutella! Block them all! Block them now!

I have some really good ideas to improve the Gnutella Network in big ways but I won't write one line of code 'till BS and LW get off it. No free innovations for them!
Users now suffer because of corporate greed.

Why don't you openp2p guys quit bothering us and spend more time working on your lame excuses for real gnutella clients