From Gnutellanews.com:
LimeWire announced that they’ve open-sourced the LimeWire codebase under the Gnu Public License (GPL). Java source code and documentation is now available from their new website dedicated to Gnutella and LimeWire development at http://www.limewire.org/.
LimeWire, which is one of the leading developers of the Gnutella protocol, decided to open-source their codebase in order to spur network improvements. Over the past several months, the LimeWire development team has been instrumental in suggesting and implementing Gnutella refinements and extensions. Although the Gnutella protocol is an open, public specification, most of the popular clients that use it are closed source. Still, the developer community as a whole has been extremely cooperative in sharing ideas about the future of Gnutella. The team felt that an open baseline implementation of a Gnutella client should be made available to allow innovators to experiment and create new improvements. The codebase has already been in use by SwapNut to create their own Gnutella client.
While FastTrack based P2P sharing programs such as MusicCity Morpheus and KaZaA have seen a recent dramatic increase in popularity, their Gnutella counterparts have not enjoyed the same boost in popularity. FastTrack, the protocol behind Morpheus and KaZaA, is a closed source proprietary system that is not directly open to new innovation or improvement. The Gnutella protocol which is behind not only LimeWire but also BearShare and many others is an open system which can be worked on and improved by the general Internet community.
In the end, technical differences between similar applications really don’t concern most end-users. If all people want to do is share files, then whichever program works the best and easiest will dominate the marketplace. The Gnutella community is up against a strong challenge to reassert itself as a leader for P2P technologies. Competition comes not only from FastTrack, but also other companies such as AudioGalaxy. The Gnutella protocol, being very open and permissive to unique innovation, clearly has the potential for immense success. However, this success rests upon the cooperation of many people with many different ideas. LimeWire’s open-source release will hopefully open doors to new involvement and improve the viability of Gnutella as an Internet mainstay.
Related Posts
- Shareaza 2.0 – Open Source
- LimeWire Getting Things Done
- Do we really need FastTrack/Sharman Networks ? (Open Source Fast Track Protocol)
- LimeWire 4.0 Arrives May 18
- OpenAG, Open Source Unix Audio Galaxy
Loading ...
