>So, even though their intentions may be good, sometimes they say and program things that don't work as advertised. I mean, why would you try and force somebody to download something that doesn't work properly, and overwrite an older version that does what it's supposed to do?

as the limewire.com webpage advertises, the newer versions support something called 'gwebcache'. this is a new (and much improved) way of initially finding other gnutella clients that will allow you to connect. limewire used to host what's called a 'pong cache' -- a server that would keep track of other hosts on the network and let new connections know where to connect to.

but, in an effort to reduce any form of centralization, allowing gnutella to truly be a dynamic distrubted network, gwebcache's were introduced. as far as i know, limewire is removing its pong cache, because it identifies them as a central bootstrap to the network, and is a high target for possible attacks.

if old clients had a good collection of other hosts in their 'gnutella.net' file, then their old clients should continue to work.

but, in the interest of making messages short & understandable, it is much better to say that old clients must upgrade. the other message could be, "you can check this file, and if you're positive that X number of clients are still able to be connected to, then you're good to go. everyone else must upgrade."

also, whether or not people believe it, there are significant improvements in the more recent versions -- especially in terms of overall network health. but yes, there are bugs that need to be fixed. and they will be.