Interview: Vinnie Falco, Creator of BearShare

Boy your guys are lucky. Two new Zeropaid interviews in a week, what a treat! As we have seen with BearShare’s alphas Freepeers are making many strides in all the right directions. Swarming, hashes, download mesh, future implementation of ultrapeers, no spyware with out your consent are a few of BearShare’s many benefits. I got a one on one with one of BearShare’s top programmers and member of the BearShare.net community. Vinnie was nice enough to take time off his busy schedule to answer the question we all want to know. Thank you Vinnie. Read what he has to say and let us know what you think. Please DO NOT flame Vinnie, he is a great guy working very hard to bring us the great software we all want, in that aspect please only post thanks or nothing. Grab BearShare Alpha 3

Zeropaid
Without too much detail why is BearShare the superior gnutella
client?
Vinnie
BearShare is written in C++, and designed to deliver the highest
possible level of performance. As home users improve their internet connection speeds by adopting DSL and Cable, and as they upgrade to more robust operating systems (like Windows XP) BearShare will gracefully scale and allow the network to take full advantage of the hardware.
Zeropaid
What features can we expect in future releases in maybe the next
month or two?
Vinnie
Swarm downloads, ultra peers, and more secure delivery of content are
planned.
Zeropaid
What is your opinion of FastTracks possible integration with gnutella in Morpheus 2.0?
Vinnie
With the proper implementation, Gnutella integration with FastTrack will only strengthen the network, as more content becomes available. Gnutella will also become even more resistant to legal attacks with this multi-vendor effort.
Zeropaid
It looks like gnutella is heading more towards the FastTrack system in terms of Superpeers and Swarming do you agree or disagree with is, why or why not?
Vinnie
I believe that Gnutella and FastTrack are going to converge in the future. So FastTrack will adopt some features of Gnutella, like global search and an open protocol, while Gnutella will gain some FastTrack features, like ultrapeers and meta data queries.
Zeropaid
Chatting over Bearshare, will it ever possible and if so will it ever be implemented.
Vinnie
We are analyzing the Defender chat implementation and redesigning it to work using existing open protocols and ultrapeers.
Zeropaid
BearShare, Gnucleus, and Limewire seem to be leading gnutella in
terms of development with many slower older clients on the system like XoloX which is getting more outdated daily, what are Bearshare’s future plans in terms of cutting them from connecting to their client?
Vinnie
There is always pressure to drop support for old clients. At some point, BearShare will reject all 0.4 connections, as well as older versions of BearShare. In order to implement some of our more advanced planned features, it will be necessary to force users to upgrade to the latest version. Cutting off these old users, while crude, accomplishes this goal very effectively.
Zeropaid
The New Napster, predictions?
Vinnie
Failure.
Zeropaid
What are gnutellas present and future advantages over other P2P
systems like the donkey, songspy, file navigator.
Vinnie
Gnutella is an open protocol. Proprietary systems may have an early
advantage in terms of technology however in the long run Gnutella’s
flexibility and well documented standards will ensure its adoption in
all areas of networking.
Zeropaid
Will Bearshare development of Superpeers run in cooperation with
LimeWire’s in a general effort to make the network more scalable.
Vinnie
BearShare will implement Ultrapeers exactly as described in the LimeWire
document. This means that BearShare Ultrapeers will host LimeWire leaves
and LimeWire Ultrapeers will host BearShare leaves. It is for this
reason we dropped the Defender chat implementation – LimeWire leaves
would be left out of the chat.
Zeropaid
Do you predict a large user jump after Superpeers are more common
similar to what happened to FastTrack?
Vinnie
I would expect an incremental step forward in terms of the adoption of
Gnutella clients.
Zeropaid
After the two biggies you are working on now Superpeers and Swarming
are implements what comes next?
Vinnie
Only the shadow knows!
Zeropaid
Will Bearshare ever implement anti-freeloader features, why or why
not?
Vinnie
If “forced sharing” is an anti-freeloader feature then yes, we will
implement anti-freeloading. Forced sharing will be turned on once
BearShare intelligently manages bandwidth and allows the user to perform
other Internet tasks without sucking up all the resources.
Zeropaid
Is it safe to say Bearshare wont pull a “limewire on us” meaning that all “spyware” will be optional at least until stated otherwise.
Vinnie
Yes.
Zeropaid
We’ve seen big hopes shot down with XoloX due to financial issues,being that your software is free as well do you foresee such a problem?
Vinnie
We do not anticipate a problem.
Zeropaid
Ok just for fun besides anything gnutella what is your favorite file
sharing system. Why?
Vinnie
MusicCity Morpheus. It’s searches are fairly decent, it is easy to get
connected to the network, and the swarm download implementation is quite
effective.