What will happen with EMULE ?

Story: What will happen with EMULE ?

emule was the innovative open-sourced client of “Merkur”, the leading developer of the new donkey-network client. To a large extent the Donkey community switched over to emule; but as Overnet with its dot-net installer of 20 MB appeared and had great advantages, better connection, and more development, emule lost ground.

There were innovative developments, like the download from webspace (15 times a chunk-partial a day per each user), which would be much faster than the upload from a user, but due to server-connection-issues Merkur has left the development group. The developer “Traod” has given up this idea as well und left the development.

Overnet made a very easy to install windows version without dot-net and doubled the userbase in one week, while the user community of emule had permanent trouble with the forum-board-communication.
Now the new donkey-client is announced, which will connect hybrid as well to the donekynetwork as well to overnet. This is the first time in p2p-age, that main network-clients not only make a client hybrid, but also a network (until now only small userbases of unix/linus came into this favour).

So what will be the characteristics of emule, why users should use emule ? There has to be something, that only emule can offer.

Sadly, not enough. And emule will get more competition: Shareaza, the main gnutella2 client is developing with a third party development group a new plugin for gnutella to connect also to the donkey-network (and now over the new donkeys as well to overnet).

The developers of emule have not announced any strategy how they will support and keep the userbase. The board-community asks for more features. But this development has nothing to do with a feature improovement. The strategy of the new-donkey development team of metamachine focuses on a hybrid network, not only an a hybrid client.

So should emule connect also to overnet? This would effort much of work, because the overnet protocol is unknown. Considering emule can also connect to the new donkey, emule is able to connect to overnet indeed.

Another user-friendly service of the new donkey will be, that there is no search for a server-met needed anymore. New donkey connects to overnet first (with a distributed web-chache system like gnutella has with its g-web-caches) and then the servermet for the donkey part inside the new donkey is updated p2p from a peer, like emule introduced.

In a few months all server-mets on webpages for the initial start of the client and connecting to the network will either dissappear or will no longer be updated.

So emule has a lot of disadvantages, which must be compensate:
- No good strategic development soultion, because of missing heads.
- Broken community, because of userswitch to overnet
- Broken community, because of userswitch to the new donkey.

- No connection to overnet in the image-claim (though over the new-donkeynetwork it is possible; and joining this development effords too much time, which could be invested better.

- No real feature developments since version 24.

- No distributed start-connecting web-cache-system like overnet or gnutella.

There are some advantages: A new french development group named E-Farm wants to creat a multiple-network serversoftware. This software should be able to handle queries from overnet, edonkey, new edonkey and overnet. Over a modul also other networks should be supported like the gnutella network.

So the claim of this project is to have a “farm” for several clients and networks, which inhibit together on that farm: A multi p2p server will be created.

What perspectives has emule regarding this background:
- implementing some new features ?
- Spending much time on reversengeneering the unknown overnetprotocol, though emule can connect to overnet through the new doneky ?

- joining a new network like gnutella to perform a hybrid network too ?

- Integrating the serversoftware EFarm in each emule-client to make a serverless network, where every client is a servent, which also can connect to the donkey-servers ?

- Making emule the windows-pendant to ML-Donkey, a hybrind-network client for unix ?

- Developing an own distributed web-cache-system for the starting ip´s or joining the (open) gnutella startingsystem in hybrid client or the closed overnet system ?

Emule has a good user-relationship because of the opensouce strategy.
This is something that founds the base, but on top the users do not want only a good featuring their needs like a friendlist and chat options, but also a connectig to the main sources of media: the donekys and in addition the overnet. This has become real with the hybrid new-donkeys.

So the perspective to make a gnutellahybrid-emule – before Shareaza releases the pluging (wich will be based on the emule code of course) – or, second, to be the windowsversion of ML-Donkey will be a good way to create a future of emule.

As we all know, the users of emule are highly technically interested and have a higher motivation to switch and test other software than the normal p2p-user. Because of the high user expectations they need a good development team to fulfill the needs in the right strategic way and to keep the mule runnig. Also the ideas of the users are a contribution to the future of that opensourced client. I hope the developers of emule are also not closed minded ?

Related Posts

1. Overnet 0.41 official release
2. eDonkey Hybrid & Overnet releases
3. NEW EMULE Tools for Donkey Overnet and Emule
4. eMule v0.26c
5. Merkur leaves eMule