I am new to Bearshare (1 week).

1.) I am wondering how Bearshare compares to Shareaza (and other gnutella client software).

2.) I assume Bearshare only accesses Gnutella (not G2, eDonkey2000 or BitTorrent). Shareaza 1.9 now accesses all these networks.

3.) How does gnutella compare to networks like Kazaa?

4.) Does BearShare provide the best on offer?

I probably shouldn't even bother responding to this, but what the hey, I'm bored anyway.

First I must say I don't use Bearshare or Shareaza regularly, as I rarely run the windows operating system on my computer--so I can't respond to the questions about the specific differences between these clients aside from what I know by hear/say. But I can reply to a couple of your questions...

1) Gnutella clients in general should provided reletivly similar results and services provided they all follow the protocol standards. Of course, that is in a perfect world and there are varients, however I have found that both Bearshare and Shareaza have loyal followings who like both clients. I have heard complaints about Bearshare's addware which may turn some people off it. I have also heard a good deal of negative things about the developers of both and how they interact with the gnutella network, although in my experence (mainly using gtk-gnutella) I find that the Bearshare island issue is over exadurated (as their ultrapeers do allow foreign clients to connect to a limited section of slots, and to my knowledge there is no descrimination between clients for ultrapeer to ultrapeer connections. Their clients in leaf mode will only connect to Bearshare ultrapeers though). I have also found that the aggressive approach of Shareaza is over exadurated as well, although I suspect this is because a lot of users don't even connect to the gnutella network anymore, prefering G2/MP and EDonkey.

2) That isn't a question. However yes, Bearshare only accesses the gnutella network, and yes Shareaza accesses all of the networks you listed. In many cases this can be seen as advantageous to Shareaza users, but in other peoples perspectives it can be seen as detremental as the band overhead to maintain connected to multiple networks is higher then simply connecting to one. Personally I'm happy just connecting to a singular network, however depending on the media type some networks are better then others. I still fire up a bittorrent client if I want to download big motion pictures or animation for example...

3) I'm rather partial to gnutella over kazaa myself for several reasons. For one, the open protocol allows me to fiddle around in ways that I simply could not on the closed Fasttrack network. As well on Fasttrack I had huge issues with falsified content which I don't have (as of yet) on gnutella. A lot of people complain that download speed or search speed is poorer on gnutella, but I have not found this to be the case myself. The one thing Fasttrack does have going for it (IMO) is the sheer number of users. It is much easier to find certain concent on it that would be impossible to find on gnutella. That said though, I find gnutella to actually be better at finding rare content in the genres of music and multimedia I am interested in.

and finally I'm not entirly sure what you mean by question number four.

Anyway, hope that helped.

-Kris

I can tell very long stories about Vinnie (Bearshare) but what do you heard about Mike (Shareaza)?

Morgwen

I really didn't want to get into this :P

but yeah, I've read Vinnie's flames before, and he is the most obvious one which comes to mind.

But Mike did alienate quite a few people (including myself for a while) with the G2 protocol, just because he took it upon himself to do it. And I do understand that he did it because he figured (probably correctly) that it would be almost impossible to get done if he needed to get a consensus with all the other big names--but it still annoyed me I think he also gets a lot of bad rep because of some of the Shareaza zealots who don't know what they're talking about, but that isn't his fault anyway.

I totally agree with PapaSMURFFS, I also hate the ineviteable ineffiencies coming with a multi protocol client for the networks it connects to: Shareaza in this case or Poisoned for mac os x.

Ciao

The Problem is that the GDF needs ages for something new, they said swarming isn´t needed until Xolox came, the people cried for swarming within Gnutella. Now G2 Mike saw that the old 0.6 needs improvements and he isn´t sure the only one he said this... now he had two options to wait for the GDF (especially Vinnie and Limewire) or do it alone - the good point in a free world nobody have to follow him... and I see many other do it. So this protocol is an improvement... an improvent which needs several months (or years) in the GDF...

To make it short, everybody can write him own protocol, nobody needs to use it - every developer decides what he does...

Morgwen

"To make it short, everybody can write him own protocol, nobody needs to use it - every developer decides what he does..."

I totally agree... except for the fact that Mike called it gnutella 2. He could have called it anything else. He just felt over the pressure of the mother of all 'Raza trolls Anenga... Now I don't care as they can't really change protocol name (even if it would be nice on their part) after one year, but the choices at shareaza are MORE than questionnable. They lost me as a user last year nearly a year ago because of that.

À+

I do understand that the GDF does take forever to adopt new things, so I do understand why he chose to strike out without them--and in many ways that is fine.

If it was just an extention to the existing protocol or even for the udp querying tacked on top that would be great. The problem I had was the name and the actual difference in the protocol specs from the origional gnutella. And for a lot of people I think that might be all they objected to, that he took it upon himself to hack out a new protocol and then grabbed the name gnutella2 (and of course, Vinnie grabbed gnutella3) when it wasn't a v2 of the previous protocol.

I know the arguement that we shouldn't be taking too much on the origional protocol specs, and that backwards compatability is limiting in some cases--but I ferverently beleave that the gnutella protocol should remain a open group effort, even with the limitations that has in maintaining the complexity and backwards compatability issues.

Anyway, I'm rambling. My issue was with his choice ot use the name and to go on an aggressive marketing campaign about how gnutella is dead and gnutella2 is the future. I don't support him at all in that (although I don't have any particular issue with his client, and I do know that he is a gifted programmer). I mean, even if he had called it the "Shareaza" network or something like that, and marketed it as "Overcoming the limitations of the gnutella protocol" I would be happier then calling it "Gnutella2" and marketing it as "The end of gnutella 0.6".

Anyway, thats my problem with it, although really I tend to stay seperate from the flame war because I do see both sides of it, and although I don't disagree I do sympathsize with developers who are trying to improve gnutella in a way they feel is best against the wishes of BearShare and Limewire.

He is not the first one who said that Gnutella has no future. And Gnutella 2 is only a name - hey Limewire is advertising with faster downloads than Kazaa . And Mike didn´t make this rules, have a look at Limewire`s or Bearshare`s campaign, its also agressive...

I don´t support Vinnie, Limewire or Mike or any other client, this time is over, I support improvement... improvement which don´t cost me a lot of money (better nothing ). Mike don´t ask for money but is developing a lot and if the users like it he is right - see Vinnie`s "great" ideas how many people complained about them, but his users like his ideas (perhaps because they suggesting it). So in his eyes he is also right. Vinnie is asking money for it (his good right) - imagine what Mike could do if he would sell Shareaza?

The good thing Gnutella is a free protocol, all can join nobody have to. Everybody can create his own protocol and choose a name which isn´t protected, everybody can claim what he wants to... this is called freedom!

Morgwen

you do have a point there, I guess I really can't complain about the marketing, I still have issues with the name though.

Limewire can argue that it searches faster then kazaa or whatever, and thats fine. If limewire was calling itself Kazaa v2 then I'd be just as annoyed.