Hi,

First, let me thank all of you hardworking Limewire developers. Limewire is very impressive.

Now, on to the feature request!

I propose adding a "Helpful Listener" feature that would really increase the general usefulness of the network.

There should be an "amount of storage to donate" box In Tools >> Options >> Uploads >> Basic. There, users would be able to specify how generous to be with their disk space by entering a number like 0, 5M, 100M (my suggested default) or even 100G. This should be tempered by code to make sure that there is plenty of free space available beyond the reserve being requested, so that unsophisticated users don't cause themselves problems by donating space they don't have.

What does it mean to donate space?
Limewire should "listen to the network" and proactively download files, in an effort to increase their general availability. This is space that is set aside for files that the computer owner has no particular interest in. They are downloaded and shared, solely to increase the usefulness of the network. More specifically:
1) Unfirewalled clients can download files, whenever they notice a failure due to two firewalled clients.
2) Firewalled clients, can still contribute by downloading files, and making them more readily available. Optimizing bandwidth and donated disk space are admittedly much trickier in this case.

Please consider this suggestion and enter it into Issuezilla as an enhancement. If there is a reason why you think this is either a "bad idea", or simply "not worth doing" please respond with details in this forum.

Thanks,
Curt