Wow, this is really an excellent thread.
Lots of good points and fair comments...
Wish it was located somewhere else, also, within the Gnutella Forums... (Morgwen, what do you think about maybe copying - not moving - it to another, more public, forum ? Don't want to do that sort of thing on my own !

re: two points...
As some may know, I was also much involved with Mike in the beginning of Shareaza... Above comments on Anenga are extreme understaement ! The worst of the nuts that plagued Vinnie, and then John Marshall, gravitated to Mike... Mike was warned to "beware of the script kiddies "... For his own reasons, obviously, he ignored the warnings and lost a core of really good people (Not alluding to myself).

BearShare and the so-called 'ads problem'...
What problem ?
It's clean and the ONLY ad(s) you see are displayed in the search window... And then, ONLY when you have no active searches taking place. Not exactly obtrusive, hmmm ?

To me, the best thing about Shareaza is that Mike 'kick-started' Vinnie to really accelerate development of BearShare... No ?

Last... Hey, kris... nice post.
Thanks