Morpheus Review
Name: Morpheus
Homepage: www.Morpheus.com
Cost: Adware
Recommended: No
Once a P2P king, Morpheus has a very rich history. Owned by Streamcast Networks, it started out as MusicCity, an OpenNap client. But for an unknown reason Streamcast Networks decided to ditch the OpenNap network and pay to access an upcoming network named Kazaa.
This was the high point in the life of Morpheus. It was very similar to KaZaA. But on February 26 2002 the owners of the FastTrack network Sharman Networks banned Morpheus from the network. According to Sharman official Niklas Zennstrom “Morpheus failed to pay their bills”. This uneasy relationship between Morpheus and Sharman recently resulted in a lawsuit. Sharman’s actions did not keep Morpheus off the FastTrack network for long though.
Morpheus turned to MLDonkey for new network connections. On February 3rd 2004, Morpheus 4.0 was released. This version connected to FastTrack, ED2K, Overnet, Gnutella, G2 and its own network, NEOnet. This may have sounded appealing to new P2P users, but for anyone familiar with MLDonkey this was just another leech client. At this point in time MLDonkey was a deranged, poorly coded mess. Somehow, Morpheus managed to use the open source MLDonkey code without releasing their own source code as the GNU license required. Ever stranger, illegally accessing the FastTrack network, Morpheus managed to be featured on Downloads.com and got no legal attention from Sharman. Morpheus was playing with fire.
At around this time, development of XoloX took an odd turn. XoloX became a clone of Morpheus, minus spyware and adware. Copying the MLDonkey core was easy enough, but how XoloX managed to get onto NEOnet is still a mystery. XoloX was also featured on Downloads.com. But both Morpheus and XoloX would suffer the fate of being labeled a leech client. XoloX development halted and hasn’t been heard from since.
Morpheus continued with minor bug fixes. On February 10th 2005 Morpheus 4.7 came out, it had only 1 change: it now had BitTorrent support. The file sharing community responded with yawns. Morpheus was a joke. But as luck would have it, the GnucDNA project decided to release their Gnutella and G2 core version 1.1.1.4 under the LGPL license as apposed to the GPL. This meant that one could use the GnucDNA core without publishing the source code.
Morpheus ditched the MLDonkey code and latched onto GnucDNA. In September 2005 Morpheus 5.0 was released. It connected to Gnutella, G2, BitTorrent and NEOnet. Morpheus’s implementation of these protocols was deemed alright by the file sharing community . One other note worthy of mentioning about 5.0; all spyware had been dropped. Adware was still present. Ditching spyware could’ve been a sign that Morpheus was ready to be one of the good guys in the file sharing community, but they would go on to show their true colors later. On April 16th, GnucDNA switched back to GPL. This gave Morpheus 2 options: 1. upgrade to GnucDNA 1.1.1.5 and release their source code, or 2. stick with GnucDNA 1.1.1.4 and prove to be as property-based as Sharman. They stuck with 1.1.1.4. On February 2nd 2006 Morpheus 5.1.2 was released. New additions included firewall to firewall transfers and iTunes.
This brings us to today. At first glance the technology behind Morpheus may impress some, but when you break it down there’s nothing special:
NEOnet is a very sophisticated decentralized network. Like Kad and Overnet, NEOnet is based on DHT technology. However, NEOnet is closed source and only used by Morpheus. So it can be labeled a for-profit network.
BitTorrent is simply the best P2P out there. But in Morpheus’s case BitTorrent is tacked on and stuck in the past. It has no DHT, so if a tracker goes down you're out of luck. It has no encryption, so if you have a bad ISP your speeds will be incredibly slow. It has no tracker or even a torrent maker.
All that is left is the outdated GnucDNA 1.1.1.4 core. Gnutella and G2 are two great networks, there is no question about that. And even the outdated GnucDNA core is a decent implementation of the protocols. There are just two problems for Morpheus, Shareaza and Gnucleus. Each connects to Gnutella, each connects to G2, each has undergone more development than the 1.1.1.4 core and neither have adware.
Not forgetting that they've also signed a deal with Peer Response to become an authorized-content-only program. The future doesn't look too good for Morpheus.
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