Originally posted by plasticparadox
> What it all boils down to is that by participating in the OpenSource p2p, you are hurting users' ability to share files. That fact is fairly clear, I'm sure.
I don't see it that way because there are too many good free clients out there they can switch to in a minute and keep on sharing. In the end we lose no one.

>You didn't answer my first two questions. And again, they "use" you in a very indirect manner.
Since they spy on other users and put adware in their programs, I choose to keep them off the network. I think it's bad to do that to your users, so I choose to block them and refuse to contribute to their product, even if it's "indirect".

All political change requires sacrifice.

It's my view that if Gnutella started off with a rule of no pay for clients (with hindsight), the free clients would have been at this point much sooner and more people would be using/supporting them. Now that the CPU cycle and file suport is going to enrich the pay for clients, they can advertise, hire people to spread the word, and so on which disadvantages the free clients.

> What I wanted to make perfectly clear is that the OpenSource p2p Network's existence is contrary to the recognized standards of the OpenSource movement.
I don't think it is. We couldn't modify this client to give people this choice without it being open source. And we give out the source of our modifications, and that would be considered under the GPL.
Open source & GPL is about the source code and how authors can restrict it's use, not user choice or what the program does.
You have the choice to use your open source word processor to create flyers trying to stop people from going to a particular store or business if you didn't like what that business does.
If you are talking about the name, the clients on the network are open source code and free to use, thus the name.
You could start your own network today that only allows movies or mp3s. It's now possible with the new software changes.

Blocking is also good for those who create a college network LAN that doesn't connect to the outside internet by accident. If a sysadmin sees too much outside traffic he may choose to block access completely.