I agree that all the various gnutella developers should have an equal input into things like the GDF, otherwise the network will stray from its roots as an open P2P network. I'm not that bothered if people go off and make closed-source clients, stick adds and spyware in them, and do anything else to them that I wouldn't want in a client because I can always just use a client without all those things that is open source. To argue otherwise is to argue against the principles of the Free Software movement IMHO. If some clients are actively ruining the Gnutella network for other clients, then those other clients' developers should first try to resolve the difference with those bad clients, and then if that's not sucessful find a way of working around them. If the "bad" clients are simply making the network better for themselves, but not making the network for everyone else any better, then leave them to it. The network is open to all, not just those with whom most developers agree.

And on the topic of freeloaders, I think it should be allowed on the network for several reasons. First of all, those who don't get much time on the net, and have a slow connection (myself sometimes included) simply cannot use the network if half the bandwidth is lost to uploads. Sometimes I need to freeload to be able to get a file in time. At other times (when possible) I'll leave my client sitting there completely open to uploads. Others with even slower connections (<56k) probably always freeload because to do otherwise would be to make the network useless from them.

Now obviously there are probably a lot of people with fast connctions who are freeloading, and that's bad, but it must be allowed because otherwise the network isn't about freedom, which IMHO is paramount. We should encourage people to share through text in clients, the design of clients, through these forums and any other areas in which we come into contact with other users.