Gnutella vs. Gnutella2 (G2)

The Gnutella history starts with Nullsoft and two guys named Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper. They created a program called Gnutella. Gnutella was designed to be a file sharing application, just like Napster, Scour or Audio Galaxy were file sharing applications. However, unlike those networks, Gnutella didn't need a central server. Gnutella was the first file sharing network that was decentralized; this was a major leap in internet technology.

Gnutella was released March 14 2000. On this particular day, two things happened. Firstly, Slashdot announced the birth of the first decentralized network causing millions of people to download the application. Secondly, Nullsoft's parent company AOL learned of Gnutella and killed it. By March 15, Gnutella was removed from every Nullsoft and AOL server. Nullsoft was consequently forbidden to work on Gnutella or any other file sharing application. However, the "damage" had already been done. Developers quickly reverse engineered the Gnutella protocol technology and created their own Gnutella clients. LimeWire and BearShare led the way with their open source Gnutella clones. Other developers also followed with GTK and GnucDNA.

Then Mike came along. Mike stepped into the picture as another developer looking to play with Gnutella, but he would soon distinguish himself. Mike took the open source Gnutella and released his own closed source version called Shareaza. To add insult to injury, Shareaza was the first multi-network client. The client had basic support for the original Gnutella network and Mike's new network that he named "Gnutella2". The Gnutella Consortium was angry to say the least:

QUOTE("Slyck Article") BearShare: Mike started off as a respected new member of the Gnutella developer's community, and then things began to go very very wrong. Many new developers implement new features which end up being harmful to the Gnutella Network, they are contacted, and a resolution is met. Mike went beyond what is considered acceptable when he created an entirely new closed protocol without the guidance and support of fellow Gnutella developers then released it on the Gnutella community. Mike was included in discussions of GUESS, the proposed evolution of the existing Gnutella protocol, as were all Gnutella developers.

Mike's Gnutella2 was nothing special. No better and no worse than the Gnutella of its day. However, Shareaza has cleaned up its act since then. It is now open source and its Gnutella connections have improved. Gnutella2 has even been picked up by GnucDNA. However, GnucDNA is the only member of the Gnutella Consortium that has chosen to work with Mike. The rest of them hold Shareaza in low regards and Gnutella2 as a poor man's Gnutella.

Now that you know a small part of Gnutella's history, you may never look at Shareaza the same way again. I know I did after learning all this. I can't deny that Shareaza is a good file sharing client, but I will say that Shareaza is the worst thing that happened to Gnutella since AOL.

Discuss Gnutella and Gnutella2 here