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Gnutella Creator Releases New Free Software
Compenguin writes: "Justin of Nullsoft released three new pieces of free (as in speech and in beer) software, an installer, a pinger/grapher, and a throttlable file copier. They all use the zlib license. The source is available now, marking the first time nullsoft has actually released source to their "Open Source" products *Cough*Gnutella*Cough*."
Well, the source is included...
And the answer is no, it's not sending anything more than pings. The source shows the unique_id being written to and read from the registry (though it wasn't written on my machine). My guess is that it helps the system keep track of multiple copies if they're all running at startup, by telling each instance which host it should ping. Though I'm a bit stumped, as I don't see a "run at startup" option within the program anywhere, and it didn't put itself into HKLM\...\CurrentVersion\Run.
I ran NSMon for 20 minutes and it didn't generate any traffic other than a UDP->DNS and lots of ICMP pings. I do agree it's missing a Quit button.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Given another day or three and they might have released the code.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Gnutella is definitely not just a tool for stealing. There have been many times when a very popular new game demo has come out, and it's too slow to download anywhere. So what can I do? Get it from someone on Gnutella. Stealing? No. FTP can be used for transferring copyrighted material. Is it just a tool for stealing? HTTP can be used the same way. Should they be shut down?
What's the point of application-level copy throttling? That's why TCP was invented, for throttling throughput over shared net links.
;-)
OT: one of my professors said that the reason TCP divides its transmit windows by 2 when there is packet loss is because the original authors assumed that packet loss meant you were now sharing that net link with 1 other user. My, how things have changed..
cpeterso
Amen brother.
-jc
Tangental thought: Nullsoft had a few other swell programs, listed as what folks inside their organization used, such as the RotoZoom Screensaver -- which appear not to be available from nullsoft.com as they had been. Have asked Justin about the renewed availability of such programs (free source or not). Good to see the three apps up for grabs... they are not a one-trick llama. :)
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Why do people keep talking about the Gnutella source code? Is it really that important? The protocol is freely available now and there are a lot of Gnutella clients for different platforms. What's the big deal to have the source code to the original Gnutella?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
More bandwidth for files, but napster servers get crowded quickly. I can't count the number of times I've been unable to logon due to full servers.
Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
Ah, like that. Yup, but that's not a problem of the system, just the implementation. if they got off their lazy asses and upgraded the servers/connection they'd work with as many users as possible. (or use opennap, though that's something different of course).
Sure. Just look at the stats for your network device.
--
Functional but doesnt' really meet the graph part of the requirement...
You like dead dude. It doesn't matter if you spent your life rescuing babies or eating them. You're dead. If you can have fun making money and working a job, then go for it. Having assloads of cash isn't exclusionary to having fun.
Click on it and then press Alt-F4.
Easy peasy japaneseyFree Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
SuperPimp is the next generation PiMP. PiMP stands for Plug-in Mini Packager because the origional version of pimp was for winamp plugins.
-Compenguin
Gnutella is in fact (very slightly) less anonymous than napster. And I don't get the 'potentially unlimited bandwith' statement, unless you mean that it doesn't work right without it. :-). With the server isn't a problem with napster for transfer speeds, transfers never hit the server. aamof gnutella has a lot more bandwidth problems than napster, especially on large networks. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed for GnutellaNG.
Last thing I saw about it was that it had been taken down to be reevaluated... has UCITA really been accepted as law in VA now, or is it still in some kind of non-determined state?
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
Not to say the technology hasn't been around for quite a while. Everyone just got fixated on IP and Frame networks..
Sorry, but freshmeat doesn't announce Windows software :)
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Free_Shit
Free_Shit
Free_Shit
Free_Shit
Free_Shit
Hehe, neither does a ping ;-)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Secondly, Perl has been ported to Windows. Now, you can run all the nice perl scripts and programs on Windows. Check the Perl Power Tools for another set of free standard Unix utilities that you can run on Windows.
Why doesnt my every insignificant software release get announced on slashdot?
Thad
Thad
nt
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
In fairness, Gnutella was thrown up for comment, when AOL (the copyright owners) took it down.
Had the source been available, than everyone distributing Gnutella might be in trouble. It was all reverse engineered, which is a good thing. Had the source code been available, AOL could demand all the copies of the program be taken down as violating their copyright...
Just a thought,
Alex
Big deal! Nothing new...
Other than that, this program doesn't seem to do anything that simple buffering couldn't provide. And, as someone else pointed out, I didn't see a link to the source for these programs. I have absolutlely no problem with that, but they shouldn't advertise source if they don't have links to it.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
All three applications are Win32, "Not that there is anything wrong with that".
But, i'm afraid i cant find the source. Is it included in the executable? (no windows systems to run on, so i cant find out myself) Or am I just missing it?
Eh, oh well...
This is a slightly useful network monitor graphing thing for Win32. It just sits in its own window, pinging a host, and giving you a graph of how long it takes each time.
How useful, now we can have more lamers transmitting unnessecary traffic so they can have a little graph show up. Just another reason to drop all incoming icmp.
Working at a company where I have suggested Open Sourcing tools we use and been met with blank stares by superiors I understand his situation.
Unfortunately Justin works for Nullsoft which is owned by AOL which in turn is part of TimeWarner which is a member of the RIAA. It is simply impossible for AOL to let Nullsoft release the source for Gnutella. Considering that Justin probably signed standard industry paperwork when he signed at with AOL , it is very likely that AOL owns the code to Gnutella and decides what gets done to it.
Unless Justin wants an intense legal battle with a corporation with more money and lawyers than you can shake a stick at, he unfortunately has to give in to their demands. Before anyone chides for this "How many of you would risk losing your job and getting involved in an expensive legal battle simply to release source code to a program that can be reverse engineered by any enterprising hacker?"
I like the idea of a "throttlable" file copier. 4am, you've been downloading for 8 straight hours.. 98% done, 5 minutes to go.. and BZZZZZZt! *Connection reset by peer* Now is the time to use the feature you've been wanting to.. and throttle the crap out of the program. Be sure to download the optional boxing gloves.. they help when you hit sharp edges...
For those bumping around in the dark looking for the source code to these guys, during the install you can check to add the sourcecode.
Surely this isn't really big news? Some guy has written some free software for windows, it's not even especially interesting software.
This looks like a job for freshmeat?
A couple of notes. These are super usefull little utilites, the installer being really nice for open source developers on the windows platform. Definatly a right on to justin.
With the same effort behind Gnutella that powered Winamp, I think it stood a good chance of becoming the defacto file-sharing software out there, the guys at Nullsoft can deliver nice, usefull, tools for the masses. Its a shame not to see it live up to its initial promise.
Its interesting. In the end you die. Would you rather spend your life being making some money and working a job, or having fun and changing the world? The irony is in the end the people out having the fun for no pay will end up just fine financially. Its nice to see some the later spirit back into a company that introduced MP3's to the world.
I can see it now, the bandwidth throttled/Gnutella/Freenet/Beowulf/SGI NUMA cluser. Yeah :)
I think it somewhat extracts the good things from GPL and BSD mhile leaving the bad ones out; it is really free, allowing all kinds of applications (commercial or freeware / closed source) to be built from it, but should require you to give credit so you don't risk anybody using your code in their closed-source product without you being told.
Would this be the best of both worlds?
I've noticed some people saying that this isn't a big deal. After all we have tons of open source software for linux. The big difference is that Win32 has been a bastion of shareware, and closed-source freeware with very little open source software. The last program I compiled from source on Win32 was NotifyCD, released in 1998. It's not a common occurance, and it's rarely as high profile as this. After all, Winamp is arguably one of the most popular pieces of software ever, and for them to publically release Windows source is a big deal because it sets the stage for others to do the same.
Also, lest we forget, the installed base of Windows is much bigger, yet there is little free open source software for it, so this will get to a great deal more people.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
At least, releasing it was an afterthought.
The story goes something like this (this is all secondhand knowledge, blah blah blah).
The boys at (G)Nullsoft have a friendly rivalry with the Napster camp. Justin said he could write up a quick piece of software that did the same job Napster does, only better (truly anonymous file sharing, distributed, potentially unlimited bandwidth). He wrote it, AOL shut it down, the source was leaked, and Gnutella was born.
Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
What if the code was released under the GPL by someone who had no right to do it?
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand, this is called "agency by estoppel". If an employee improperly released code under the GPL, and I use it in a product believing in good faith that the employee was authorized to act on behalf of his employer, then the employer has no recourse against me, and the situation is "as if" the employee really were an agent of the company.
Any lawyers out there want to check my work?
Yet another reason that companies are loathe to embrace the concepts of The Cluetrain Manifesto.
Just another reason to drop all incoming icmp.
Dropping ALL inbound ICMP can be a very bad thing.
Blocking ICMP Destination unreachable messages is a pain in the ass - when I try to get to a host, I _LIKE_ getting an immediate reply that there is a network problem (or that the host isn't listening on the port I want to use), instead of having to wait for the connection to timeout.
What about the 'Fragmentation Needed but DF set' message? Blocking that is a GREAT way to screw your connections performance.
I agree that SOME ICMP messages should be dropped (most notably ICMP echo-request) but blocking the protocol entirely is a bad idea. It exists for a reason. Yes, someone might abuse it (like in this example), but then again, someone might abuse UDP as well (what if it did a traceroute continually, so you could see _where_ the connection went bad) - would you advocate blocking UDP completely?
I didn't think so.
Several people make frontends for it as well.
http://jrsoftware.org/
File copying really does occur at the application level. Sure, there may be API's for this, but they are little more than a simple loop reading and writing the data too and from the source.
Take a look at file explorer. It has had a progress bar for a long time, but that can't be done with the standard API's (now with IE 4/5 it can be).
As for the throttling, I suppose that has it's uses. But that too is not too difficult, just a bit of Sleep()ing. (or a timer)
have fun.
nathan
Automatically skips or overwrites existing files
Alright! just what I've been looking for, no more "Do you wish to overwrite this file?" pop-ups! WOOHOO!
>produce while working for the company (note: I
>don't say 'on company time, or with company
>equipment').
Yey another reason to work in a *civilized* state like California. Such contracts are illegal and unenforceable here. Even if you *DO* sign one, such as in a generic "boilerplate" contract with a company that has operations in many states, some of which might enforce such clauses... they are all null and void here.
As a matter of fact, when I signed on to my current job (first job of mine in CA), there was an addendum to my contract explicitly stating all of the above, and declared any such clauses in the main contract to be null and void in accordiance with California law.
Nice to see that SOME states actually give a crap about the people who live and work there. Virginia, OTOH, was, IIRC also one of the first states to enact UCITA. Too bad for Nullsoft that they neglected to think of things like this when they sold out to AOL.
You won't see me setting foot in a festering backwoods hellhole like VA with neanderthal laws like they have there, much less living or working in the place.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
I think NetMon is missing a quit function. And why is there a uniqueid field in the ini? Is the prog sending out more info than pings?
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