> without Bearshare or Limewire although I doubt
> the network would have grown that fast

Dude, you are ignoring reality. Limewire is used by only a few percentage of users, Bearshare has been used by a high amount of users in the past, but now isn't state of the art (corrupted resume, slow downloads). As a matter of fact a lot of developers argue and fight against each other (Bearshare and Limewire in the past, Falco against all), but do not further develop Gnutella... all this is slowing down and throwing back gnutella development for months!
I'm glad that a software like Xolox and Gnotella came up and showed what Gnutella could be and made an end of pro/contra MP3 metadata shown in Gnutella. The first thing Vinnie does was attacking any yelling to everyone that is not Bearshare, also the nobel closed grouped "the_GDF" did not see or learn a lesson from Xolox, Gnotella or Fastrack advantages. I appreciate Limewire's reseatch, but I have never seen the Limewire developer discussing with other interested users.

Gnutella is an open protocol, most gnutella developers are closed minded.