XoloX, a popular Gnutella application, is coming back into the ring of top Gnutella programs. Once #1 on Zeropaid.com’s Top 5 Windows P2P applications, it was removed due to developer resignation and development inactivity. Shortly after, Zeropaid.com was contacted by an anonymous user and was rumored to the fact that XoloX was returning. Later confirmed, many P2Pers rejoiced to the fact that their favorite Gnutella/P2P application is returning.
Last interview (XoloX’s going away interview), XoloX commented on what they wanted to see in a future Gnutella application.
Zeropaid.com: Which features would you like to see in a future Gnutella client?
XoloX Team: I think our concept really proofed itself.
- Simple interface. The majority of the people doesn’t care for the options.
- Auto configuration. Minimize all questions for users.
- Smart researching. To finish downloads as quickly as possible one has to search to find new hosts constantly.
- Multiple source download. This is important for fast downloads and it spreads the load over the network.
- Partial downloads. Files are getting bigger and this feature must be implemented for a network to provide new hot material quick.
- Supernode technology. This would dramatically increase the searching capacity and lower the overhead bandwidth.
Are any or all of those features included in this latest release of the ever-popular Gnutella client? Find out below, and be sure to check out their release coming here on Zeropaid.com first!
Zeropaid.com: Why is XoloX returning?
Team XoloX: There are a few answers to this. We strongly believe in the power of peer-to-peer to bring about positive global change through sharing of knowledge and information. Certainly the recent Dutch Court of Appeals ruling has given us motivation in its affirmation that technological innovation is legal and should not be thwarted by special interests. We think of ourselves as pioneers for the emancipation of information and sharing of knowledge and not as pirates. We are pleased that the Dutch courts agree and we hope that other countries around the world will follow the Dutch lead.
During our self-imposed exile, we teamed up with some very creative digital media pioneers and began discussing what the future could hold for P2P. Our passions have driven us to return now. We know that XoloX could be a great P2P client for the masses and we intend to pursue that goal. We hope to do our part to help make P2P and Gnutella as important to online communications as is ICQ, email and instant messaging.
We also think that it is critical for the P2P Community to work together and leverage the strength of the huge number of users to become a political force for good. We want to help our users’ voices to be properly heard by their governments. The adversaries of P2P are the opponents of innovation, knowledge and advancement. These adversaries are well organized and P2P supporters need to do the same. We could no longer just sit on the sidelines and watch these developments unfold. We knew that the only way to make a difference was to be back in the game.
Zeropaid.com: Will it be the original development team?
Team XoloX: We have now increased our development team to 7 comprised of some of the original team members along with some new members.
Zeropaid.com: Will you be testing grid-computing in the latest version?
Team XoloX: The current beta and the upcoming releases do not include grid-computing functionality. For the moment we are working on improving the bandwidth efficiency of XoloX in the Gnutella network and implementing new, cool features to expand the Gnutella community. This does not mean that grid-computing is completely out of our scope because we believe that it can play a viable role in certain scenarios. If we ever do begin testing grid computing, we can assure you that our users will be well informed and that any participant will know exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Zeropaid.com: What new features can we expect from this new release?
Team XoloX: We believe the single most important aspect of P2P is community and that is one of the things you will see with our IRC chat client-the first of many community features to come. For a complete overview of our features we would like to refer to our website http://www.xolox.nl. Apart from some cosmetic changes, we would like to point out some the following new features:
- Showing meta-data of MP3-files; as a step towards full meta-data search capabilities to be released in a next version.
- Compatibility with the Gnutella 0.6 specification.
- Improved network efficiency, for instance by working on the re-query algorithm.
- GUI improvements like auto-complete typing in the search window and shortcut keys to all functionality
Zeropaid.com: What old features are returning?
Team XoloX: Our old-time classics are of course mentioned on our website; let’s point out the important ones:
- Hassle-free installation and configuration.
- Auto-resume of downloads.
- Segmented concurrent downloading (a.k.a. multi-sourcing).
- Automatic re-querying (under an improved regime).
- Partial downloads (XoloX-only).
- XoloX remains Spyware, Hijackware and Sneakware free.
It’s more than just old features that are making their come back, it is also the design philosophy that is still going strong. XoloX started out as a “KISS-compliant” Gnutella client. Simplicity and user-friendliness remain very important guidelines for our development now and into the future.
Zeropaid.com: Does XoloX contain Super-peers, if so then why, if not, then why not?
Team XoloX: The upcoming release does not contain supernode or ultrapeer-like functionality. We acknowledge the importance of improved network architectures for Gnutella and greatly appreciate the efforts by other clients to implement these. We are committed to taking an active part in the design and development of these new architectures; we hope to be substantial contributors in that area in one of our next releases.
Zeropaid.com: Is XoloX spy-ware free?
Team XoloX: We make the following promise to our users: XoloX contains NO SpyWare, NO SneakWare, NO HiJackWare. We will never trick you into installing something that you don’t want to install or that you don’t know you are installing …not now…not ever!
Zeropaid.com: How do you feel about people hacking your previous client? Was that good for Gnutella?
Team XoloX: We were surprised that there was such an interest in XoloX after we were gone. We took the hacking efforts as a huge compliment to the technology we developed and the desire by so many to keep it alive. However, without the continued development of XoloX on our end and the evolution of Gnutella, the hacked clients would have been phased out and die a silent death. Now that we are back, we hope that there will be no need for hacked versions of XoloX and that our past supporters can become pillars of the XoloX community and help in our efforts to defeat the opponents of P2P and those that are hell-bent to stifle technological innovation. We say it on our home page: “Let Freedom Reign”
Zeropaid.com: Because XoloX has been out of the Gnutella market for some time, how does this new version fare to something like Bearshare, or Limewire?
Team XoloX: Ultimately, software applications are successful if they provide a good user-experience. We think that XoloX fills a void for a simple but powerful P2P client that anyone can use no matter how proficient they are with computers. We are committed to work with other Gnutella developers to improve the quality of the network, but when it comes to specific comparison between others and us, we would like this comparison to be made by P2P users in general and Gnutella-uses in particular.
Zeropaid.com: Is XoloX here for the long-hall? Or is this another few month release?
Team XoloX: We are committed to be in the thick of things from this point forward. Only death or taxes will stop us now!
Zeropaid.com: Since XoloX’s resignation from the Gnutella market, a lot in the legal world has taken place. Morpheus is gone, KaZaA is starting to charge, and most clients are now being hacked by people like Dr. Damn. How do you feel about these uneasy times?
Team XoloX: Actually we don’t see the times as being uneasy at all. Developers of P2P applications now know better where they stand today than a few months ago. In a few months from now a new equilibrium will be found. It was sad to watch how two leaders in the P2P Community, like Morpheus and KaZaA, turned from potentially being so good into something so bad-and we are not talking about technology here. We feel this is unfortunately what happens when companies replace their original visionaries with managers who view their users as nothing more than $dollar signs$. It is an age-old formula for extinction.
Most software developers don’t like to see their software being hacked, but if you antagonize your users, you run the risk of having users taking matters into their own hands out of sheer frustration. According to community feedback, Kazaa and Morpheus have violated the trust their users put in them. P2P file sharing is maturing and the steps taken by people like Dr Damn show that users are fighting back. We believe that if you respect your users and deliver them a really great product and valuable services, then you will be successful. At XoloX, we continue to strive to be innovators and leaders. We hope that our supporters will understand that we need to pay our bills but we will not do so at the expense of losing their trust or respect. Everything needs a balance and we hope to strike the right balance-we will certainly hear from the community if we get off track. We will work hard to earn the loyalty of our users and not their wrath.
Zeropaid.com: Bearshare and Limewire now offer systems that can either be paid for and have no ads or spy ware, or you get Ads and spy ware. Does XoloX have any plans on releasing a system like this? Or is XoloX free and true.
Team XoloX: XoloX is free and will remain true to our users. If we ever offer a paid version of XoloX, it will have to have something pretty amazing to warrant a price tag-and paying for the ‘privilege’ of not having spyware or adware just does not seem like enough justification to us. We will ask our users what they want and what they would or would not pay for before we would do anything.
Zeropaid.com: In the last interview, you said you had liked to use E-donkey2000. Will XoloX include any features or be able to have web sites such as Share Reactor available?
Team XoloX: For that question we suggest you to keep an eye on our website. We expect to focus on community building and will introduce features to accomplish that goal. Share Reactor appears to have become the community for eDonkey users and we already have others such as Xenomorph, XoloX Girl and XoloX Boy that had begun their own community building efforts for XoloX supporters. We applaud their efforts and will support them and others the best we can.
Zeropaid.com: Will we see more unity from Gnutella developers. Vinnie at one point said that he would not allow access to older versions of XoloX. Did this hurt file sharing, or was he in the right?
Team XoloX: Everyone must decide what is right for him or her. It is our position that unity between the developers is in the best interests for Gnutella and that competitors must work together if the P2P Community is to continue to grow. We think that the very public Gnutella Network has the opportunity to become the standard protocol for P2P. Either you are part of the solution or part of the problem. Let the community decide who is moving Gnutella technology forward and who is throwing up roadblocks.
Zeropaid.com: Did you work with John and Adam on this release?
Team XoloX: Before the beta release we were in contact with Adam. He was very sportsmanlike by welcoming us back and inviting us to participate in the development of Gnutella. We were touched (not surprised) by this welcome and gladly accepted his invitation. We have not had any contact with John, but hope to talk to him in the near future. At XoloX we value the work of John, Adam and all the others who innovate as opposed to those that imitate. We hope to be working with all the innovators in the future.
Zeropaid.com: What type of ads for revenue will you be adding & will we have a choice on removing it?
Team XoloX: Being assaulted by several pop-ups an hour and having blinking banners light up a web page like the Vegas strip is not only annoying to users but significantly reduces the effectiveness of the advertising. But to offer software free to consumers we need to generate revenue. So, our goal is to provide quality advertising not quantity. We will seek advertisers with products and content we believe our users will find useful and interesting. By focusing on quality our users will not be harassed and we will be able to deliver a more qualified consumer to our advertisers. As for ad units, we will offer contextual ads, sponsorships, rich media, newsletter inclusion, and standard banners. We do not have plans to offer pop-ups. We will rely on user feedback to further direct our advertising and revenue strategies and hope to hear from them in this forum. There are other ways to generate revenues besides advertising, such as merchandise (really cool T-shirts that you would want to wear, etc) and service provider partnerships. XoloX intends to be a good Gnutella citizen and we realize that users have a choice of which client to support, therefore we are specifically focusing on alliances with companies providing communication tools and services that will benefit our users. While there are always ways to remove ads, we hope that by not being annoying, users will not have the desire to remove anything. It is our lifeline.
Zeropaid.com: What are your thoughts of developers such as Vinnie who was going to cut access to XoloX and its users? Is this helpful to Gnutella?
Team XoloX: To be honest, we are not too concerned with the statements of an individual. Gnutella is, adopted by a broad community of talented developers, who have reached consensus on how the network should be constructed and who define what is done and what is not. Our development is focused on this “general consensus”.
If an individual client desires to block XoloX, there is nothing we can do about it. Would this be helpful to Gnutella? We don’t think so because the diversity of the clients is a major advantage of Gnutella and should be cherished. Within XoloX there is no spite over the statements of Vinnie and others. Gnutella is an open arena and we would like to spend our energy on learning from other developers to improve the network and our client. If you read between the lines, this is an open invitation to all developers out there who hold Gnutella close to their hearts and want to discuss its development with us.
Zeropaid.com: Layering Gnutella – do you think it will happen?
Team XoloX: Inevitably it will happen. Will it impact Gnutella considerably? We think it will not. The network is highly fragmented and because of its de-central nature the impact will be limited.
Zeropaid.com: Are you still worried about lawsuits?
Team XoloX: Sure, we are worried, worried about the legal ramifications that other countries rulings could have on the state of technological innovation in the future and the freedom of shared knowledge today. However, the Dutch Court of Appeals recent ruling makes XoloX the only P2P company in the world that is operating under an affirmative legal ruling. We do not have to run off to the South Pacific to search for an island hideaway and sing ‘YO HO HO’ while drinking barrels of ale. Actually, that does not sound all that bad-maybe we should reconsider. But seriously, it has always been our belief that the development of innovative technology should not be stymied by special interests…if that were the case we would all be driving around in horse drawn buggies instead of Volkswagens. If we do get embroiled in litigation, it will become the biggest forum ever for the freedom of information and the emancipation of the Arts & Sciences…and you can bet that the world will know how to pronounce the name X-O-L-O-X!
Zeropaid.com: Are you going to add the features that say Gnucleus have or are you going to keep it simple?
Team XoloX: We strongly believe that adding features does not necessarily make an application more complicated (from a user’s point of view). User-friendliness lies in design and not in the number of features. Under the hood, XoloX has always been very advanced with features like multi-source downloading, partial downloads, auto-connection and auto-updating. Features that were not common practice in Gnutella-clients about a year ago. We will be improving XoloX with features just as innovative or even more so. Our users can rest assured; we focus our development on the inherent nature of peer-to-peer communications and how to efficiently facilitate the searching, exchange and the delivery of files between peers. We will continue to explore ways to simplify that process and open up P2P to the masses.
Zeropaid.com: Anything else you would like to say to Zeropaid.com and the rest of the world?
Team XoloX: We would like to take the opportunity to thank all the users who stood by us and supported us from our launch version 1.05 until our last official release of 1.12. We would like them to know that we greatly value and appreciate their help and hope we can count on them for trying out our newest official version 1.18 and all coming releases to follow. ”Your voice is heard.”
Since this is May 1, we want to send out a “MAY-DAY” alert to urge the entire P2P community to begin to organize itself so that technological innovation does not come to an end because the wishes of many are being drowned out by the voices of the few.
Zeropaid.com Note: The final XoloX release should be out in 24-48 hours. Check back here to find out EXACTLY when it’s finished and released!
