Hi,
I want to repost some of my posts from the older but flooded thread, a summary:

What's happening?
We had many threads here on Gnutellaforums about Bearshare is abusing Gnutella. Is it true? I'm pretty sure you haven't seen any non-commercial client comming with loud marketing, ads, spyware, proprietary extensions, clustering, blocking or disadvantaging other clients, trying to control and takeover a big market share. Only commercial clients do as far as I know, only Bearshare and Limewire do (okay and Morpheus comes with Spyware too).

Not enough, Vinnie (Bearshare programmer) is turning Gnutella now into a proprietary BS network since months (proprietary Gnutella packages, proprietary v0.6 headers, clustering BS clients, prefering BS clients, changing host caches without notice, blocking v0.4 clients without technical reasons, e.g. Xolox). Vinnie also had this older idea of blocking a client and still download from it (after complains he dropped this idea). Ask a Gnutella developer if something technical is not understood or not true in your eyes, they will confirm it. Also Vinnie is taking knowledge from the so called GDF, but new features have been implemented closed for others, without giving back something equivalent.

Any doubts about the given information, those are not facts? Please explain and prove Vinnie is NOT clustering/blocking and NOT destroying, plundering free Gnutella and that the little guys will NOT have fewer connections.

This "sectioning/seperating/clustering" of Bearshare (and Limewire) are only beautiful words: As a matter of fact it is a kind of blocking, it looks different but has 90% the same effect as blocking. It's the first step to a full proprietary Bearshare network, loosly based on Gnutella protocol. Just wait some months, Vinnie will introduce more features to increase his control IMHO, now that he managed the first step (and nearly nobody complained). Oh and don't believe those rumours clustering improves the network, how does a monoculture instead of a common improved Gnutella protocol bring advantages? Also wanna have a one vendor internet (e.g. AOL), instead of the world wide web and it's reliable HTTP protocol plus a variety of clients? Sure, Bearshare is a nice client, but this doesn't mean it should control Gnutella... perhaps you recognized there are better clients or clients which brought new features into Gnutella.
Congratulations developers, you gave Vinnie a free card for plundering and splitting Gnutella. Limewire are best friends to Bearshare, build a kind of busines alliance and defend each other. Didn't I hear voices when one vendor starts blocking others, he will be kicked out of the community?

What to do now?
Well, I tolerated Bearshare/Limewire selfish commercial politics, helping newcomers and developers.... for months. After all I don't believe in it anymore... and I have enough! It seems Vinnie's agressive politics has won. He turned the face of Gnutella for ever! *sigh*
Think about it. Gnutella was an open protocol for everyone with a variety of equal client, but this ended on March 2002. What we have today? We have a BS network, a LW network, a Gnutella clients network arround. Some of the other clients and users will be sucked into spyware paid BS/LW network in future (with lots of loud marketing).... or.... the remaining users regroup into something that is not BS/LW controlled. I see no advantage for the users in a Gnutella monoculture. Do you prefer a proprietary 'Bearshare network' or 'Gnutella'?

My advice: For the sake of Gnutella do not cooperate or support Bearshare/Limewire anymore!
Choose a better client (Windows, Linux, more on Zeropaid). Stay informed and do not believe in propaganda.

The OpenP2P network (intoduced from Anonnn) maybe one alternative. Seperating from BS in a matter of defense, I won't feed Vinnie's BS network with my files anymore. I'm sorry to say... Vinnie started to block other clients, now he should be prepared to get blocked in return from these clients he disadvantages. He can not abuse others for his Bearshare network and expect this lasts forever.
The better idea: Vinnie should have the honour and the truth and let Gnutella alone. Call his network 'Bearshare network' and does not touch free Gnutella anymore (but honestly he needs the Gnutella userbase and first wanna grab a bigger userbase and then take them away + he uses the knowledge/ideas of the other GDF developers to improve his client IMHO). If Bearshare leaves it would be also healthy for Gnutella, I see currently no client that has such heavy freeloading support as Bearshare has (and we know busy slots are the biggest pain on Gnutella still). If he leaves Gnutella development could be friendly, efficient and free again. *dreaming*
A revolutionary idea: Bearshare and Limewire agree to stop all proprietray network/protocol extensions and willing to cooperate democratic with all developers, to improve Gnutella with combined force.
Another alternative is further developing Gnutella protocol alone and make sure no commercial abuse is possible (e.g we had my Gnutella v0.7 proposal and GodxBlue's GNUXP which I like most of all).

What's wrong?
Please understand we are only "defending" Gnutella, that's what fairness contains. I'm sorry too, please complain at Vinnie's table. Fight the cause not the symptoms: Bearshare and Limewire want to be treated as fair Gnutella clients, okay, then Vinnie/Mark has to follow a simple rule and treat other clients equal again. Gnutella is not a two class community where some are master and all others are minors. Before you ask, the problem is not closed sourced software or making money with a protocol. I like money too. :-) The problem is the unacceptable politics of some vendors which would like to control other (as described above) and some of us will not contribute rescources and knowledge to the benefit of a single/two vendor network.

My idea of a Gnutella network is different, fair, friendly, efficient and in peacefull cooperation, where the benefit of a better network will be for every client. Which means more files and a better technology for you!

Greets, Moak

PS: Moderators, could you please protect this thread from too much flooding? :-) Perhaps move repeated flooding into another thread?