Bearshare "Vinnie" says "the forum needs heavy handed moderation" and is deleting anything that doesn't go along with his self interest.
That's fine, it's his forum, he can do what he wants, but as far as I am concerned, he's gone way too far this time.
He has been told about the "spyware" problem, and it took major pressure from many people for him to finally warn people about the installation of Onflow, Savenow and other software.
Without that all the pressure he would have never done anything (IMHO).
He has conveniently lost messages before, trying to cover this up, but in the end the pressure made him do something about the spyware.
He seems to want to control Gnutella, practically dictate over it, and now he wants to dictate over what people say about his software.
Some new encrypted packets are being sent from his software, no one knows what is in them, and he doesn't seem to get that privacy and security is a BIG concern for most people. He makes all sorts of excuses for why they should be encrypted, but there is technically no reason for them at all.
I don't know what it's going to take to get him to remove these "spy" packets, or make them open.
It's sad when this happens to a great network such as Gnutella, and I hope this doesn't start happening with other clients.
Well, that's my rant for the day!
What's your opinion?

This whole thing concerns me, if this guy won't take some criticism about his software, then won't remove the stuff thats bothering people without a lot of presure, I don't see any reason to trust his software on my computer.
Yes, I have a firewall, but is that enough when you tell that firewall to let BearShare send packets out over the net? Plus the RIAA and all that, I am worried. I don't think it's worth the risk. Plus there are other clients out there.

I posted the following on the Bearshare.net forum and it was removed with 12 hours. I can only assume that Mr. Falco removed it because he threatened to do exactly that, and more, including shutting down the forum most critical of Bearshare and the bundled spyware that it's installation contains. There is NO REASON to continue to use Bearshare. Gnucleus is a better gnutella servant and is open source, no spyware. The post that was censored on the Bearshare site follows:

[In followup to a thread about Mr. Falco's threats to shut down the Adware forum and censor posts]

"Vinnie's attitude recently is the reason that have uninstalled Bearshare from my box and have moved to Gnucleus. I have always been disturbed by the spyware bundling, but put up with it because I thought Bearshare was the best servent available. Then I found out about the encrypted message packets that Bearshare sends out and that disturbed me more. I have never heard a pausible explanation for these encrypted messages from Vinnie to this date. Finally, within the past week, Vinnie has posted several messages which include vitriolic comments about folks who may have questiond his judgement in using the spyware and has threatened to shut down this forum. That was enough for me.

I decided to try a couple of servents that I had never tried to find an alternative to Bearshare and I stumbled upon Gnucleus. Let me tell you folks, Gnucleus is as good, if not better than Bearshare. In many ways it IS better than Bearshare. It is more stable, seems to return more search results which are better organized, and the download resume features are a lot more intuitve. But best of all, there is NO SPYWARE, it sends no encrypted packets, and is OPEN SOURCE. I uninstalled Bearshare and I'm not looking back. Gnucleus is serving all my Gnutella needs without all the hassle and worry associated with Bearshare. I'd urge anyone who has doubts about Bearshare to check it out.

Hope this helps..."

DON'T USE BEARSHARE IF YOU VALUE YOUR PRIVACY!

Yeah I deleted your post.

You are a nincompoop.

The nature and content of the messages was CLEARLY EXPLAINED!

You are full of caca!!!

"He has conveniently lost messages before, trying to cover this up, but in the end the pressure made him do something about the spyware."

Bullshit. If you paid any damn attention, you would notice that I have taken it upon myself to visit the forum every couple of hours so I can recover the messages when they get removed. This behavior is totally inconsistent. I disagree that I was trying to "cover this up". If you posted this $hit in my forum I would delete it instantly because its garbage. I wasted hours trying to debug the stupid forum. In the end, I spent MONEY and more TIME with vBulletin, so I could deploy a new forum that handles the large number of users without crapping out on the messages.

So what do you have to say for yourself now, jerk?




>He seems to want to control Gnutella, practically dictate over it, >and now he wants to dictate over what people say about his >software.

No, if you paid attention you see that not all posts are removed (GOD why am I going through this again).

Sensible, reasonable posts get to STAY, and I read them and take action appropriately.

Well, not bad for one post.
My English is getting better and better! But, what is a nincompoop, I wonder?

Greetings....

You never explained anything. You made some lame excuse about "update notices" but made no explanation whatsoever about why this requried encryption. You are a liar and cannot be trusted.

Vinnie, you sound like a ten year old. Why don't you grow up and begin acting like an adult. You are a talented programmer, but you have no skills whatsoever when it comes to public relations. I was a loyal Bearshare user. I was even willing to deal with the bundled crapware, uninstalling it each time I upgraded to a new version of Bearshare. It was your attitude and finally your unwillingness to answer satisfactorily questions about the encrypted packets and listen to the needs of your user base that finally got to me to stop trusting you. When the encrytped packets came to light you became SO defensive and abusive that I felt that something had to terribly wrong with Bearshare for you to react that way. It became quite clear to me that you are trying to hide something. Why else would you suddenly begin censoring your own forums and reacting to your users the way you have?


Bullshit. You've deleted whole discussions because you did not like where they were going. Look at the way you react to me and other people posting here. Your vulgarity and immaturity have invalidated any argument you may be making. Grow up.

Duh!!! Have you not noticed that soon after the forum burps, I go in and manually repair the freakin threads database?!

Wake up!

Ok im a newbie reading around in all this at the moment - i certainly dont know the facts.

But i do know that this "vinnie" bloke _seems_ an a1 *******. Thanks for putting me well whatever piece of code hes written.

This thread has turned into a flamewar so it's now closed.