File Sharing: Decentralizing, Open-Source Fasttrack

Eloquence writes: "I've written a comparison of current file sharing software; what's interesting is that the original centralized indexing concepts are losing ground because of filters, and most relevant file sharing systems by now use at least a server-network, or a completely decentralized architecture. Unfortunately, most networks are proprietary, but at least there is now an open-source client to access the most popular network, Fasttrack's Kazaa/Morpheus, which was originally only accessible under Windows (around 500,000 users online at any time)."

Comments

Wow

[drix]

I have to say I'm impressed. There is a reason that the only previous FastTrack clients were fr Windows: FastTrack is a closed source C++ based protocol stack that only exists for that operating system. FastTrack's livelihood is dependent upon licensing that stack to developers and hence keeping the protocol proprietary. That someone has reverse engineered it quite successfully is highly impressive and also a little worrisome if you're FastTrack. I'm surprised we haven't heard a lot more about this and FastTrack's response.