I agree. Take Gnotella's case for example. It was the best client when it was under active development. If it had been open source someone would have implemented v0.6 handshaking and I could still be using it.

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"

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Gnutella Forums en Español!

Yeah,
I asked those guys to give the source to me so i can code on,
but they didnt reply.
Now I started from the scratch

1) What does that have to do with best client.
2) Might be a problem with LimeWire, might be a problem with Shareaza. Gnucleus doesn't brose/chat with either. Does that mean it can't be considered the best client?
3) Finally a good point. But its stability hasn't really been put to test on a wide range of systems. Gnucleus is a great client that's considered "mature"; I've hard far more crashes with it than Shareaza. Actually I've never had a non-beta of Shareaza crash on me. But I do see other people complaining about Shareaza so there must be a problem.
4) What does that have to do with best client. Heh...."open source-zealots".....
I wish I had Mike/Shareaza's patience...

Anyway, to the original poster. I suggest Gnucleus or Shareaza. LimeWire if on a non-Windows system. (Mac, Linux, etc.).

1) It's very strange - Shareaza is probably the best client out there, but hardly anybody uses it. I guess it's the "Mac" of the Gnutella world. It's really really good, but everyone is just too hard headed to use it :P
2) Not a problem with Shareaza.
3) Unstable? Can you tell us why? How is it unstable?
4) HAHAHA! Oh, boy. You'd be kicked up the a-hole if you said that at a place like /. "Non-Commercial" means they do not charge for licenses/use etc. And indeed, Shareaza does not charge anything. Thus it is indeed "Non-Commercial". It's closed source because that's what Mike wants it to be. Closed source software can be non-commercial too, you know. And open source, even though it may cause you to implode, can be commercial as well (like this forum software, for example :P). Open source isn't always the wisest path to take.

I've seen some Shareaza Ultrapeers, but there aren't many of them. It's logical, after all it's a new client, and it's nothing compared to the millions of downloads that the big clients had.

Besides, as some people said, the number of users has nothing to do with wether it's good or not.

Ivan
"In the dark we make a brighter light"

__________________
Gnutella Forums en Español!

As a recent Shareaza convert, I can say I didn't try it earlier because I'd never heard of it. No hard-headedness about it, I simply wasn't aware of its existence. If I'd heard of it earlier I might have saved myself $8 and countless frustrations playing hunt-the-wumpus with LimeWire.