Stief, yeah dev will continue... I'm beginning to think that's worse that if LW shuts its doors... As FOSS, LW will be worked on anyways, while now the LW infected with the CC branch will destroy Gnutella as users will continue to dl it until Gnutella is to ill to be usable in any way.
Here is my foreseeable scenario:
LW implements the CC branch with no sharing of unlisenced stuff. LW 4.9.31 is released in the wild and LW is signaled through the update mechanism. One week later, already 25% of the nodes do not share anything over Gnutella. People begin to notice file availability decreases. Not so long after, files become so scarce that remaining sub 4.9.31 nodes are filled with requests and do not send results anymore to searches. UPs are sending searches to the highest TTL nearly everytime, making dynamic querying inefficient because of overloaded UPs with search traffic. This means the search horizon will go down many times too.
After 3 weeks, many people will already find other P2P because they work better. In three months LW use base will go from 2.7 mill simulateneous users (trap_kaw crawler) to less than 500 000. By then, many Gnet apps will ban LW because of the leeching. The only major Gnutella app then will be Bearshare with its dead development! (but still the best Gnet app by far anyway).
Alternatives? Well since Gnutella will be illed, Gnet alternatives are not a very good thought. Multinetwork apps neither. Edonkey and Bittorrent are the only good network alternatives right now.
hehe, I do look pessimistic!
Maybe I should submit that news to Slycktom...
CVS links:
http://www.limewire.org/fisheye/view...branch/limecvs http://www.limewire.org/fisheye/view...branch/limecvs