I don't come to web fori often and I hate them, so I won't bother you too much.

With all due respect, I've read this whole thread and it is completely stupid: people are throwing arguments over and over and don't listen to each other. Repeating one's arguments, rephrasing etc... is of no use when the other party is not listening.

Now that I got your attention, let me state that I for one do not care the least whether there are for-profit software on Gnutella or not as long as the files those node share are truly shared to anyone that can find them and request them.

I think afisk's point on the Ultrapeer clustering makes sense. They're not really clustering LW clients together, they're clustering Ultrapeers because this is the only way to maximize the horizon with today's Gnutella protocol and limitations. This is so easy to prove that I'll let that as an exercise to Moak.

As far as the Open P2P network goes, I'm not interested for now. If it becomes a major network, I'll make sure my client can become a bridge between OP2P and Gnet so that people find each-other's file and that we don't have two networks stupidely sharing files in their own selfish way. Until then, I wish them good luck, but I think it will die in a few months.

Finally, I think LW and BS deserve some amount of recognition for what they brought to Gnutella. Sure, they made mistakes, but so did I, and so will everyone out there.

Leaving the GDF was the best thing I ever did, because I think what matters is what goes on the network. Instead of discussing forever, I've decided to make my own features or adapt the existing features as I implement them (to fix any broken part and glue back both pieces). However, I communicate to the GDF in a write-only manner so that everyone knows what I'm doing and can cooperate if they wish.

I encourage everyone to do the same, and then natural selection will elect the best features. There will be no pain, and no bad experiences. Even if your own features do not catch up, you'll have learned by doing them and won't repeat the same mistakes.

So long.

Raphael