gnutella and beyond

"Maverick programmers prepare to unleash anarchy on the web..."

28 March 2000
An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal with the above title tipped me off to this, a case in point of several things (see text):

the rapidity with which things happen in the medium
the difficulties of knowing how to keep a finger on such an information pulse
the widening and unforeseen implications of technological innovation
and probably other things I haven't thought of yet

To some degree what follows is a "heads up..." to those of us who are concerned with "information fluency" and think we need to be better informed ourselves. It's also case study material for University Scholars 101/201.

Information wants to be free?

A search of AltaVista turns up 62 pages for 'gnutella', and as usual the results take me to places I didn't already know about, like

betanews.efront.com
Gnutella lives on
Nullsoft Gnutella Beta Test
The Nerd Intelligence Agency
a few snippets from today's offerings:
Thu, Mar 23, 2000 at 09:22:52 By: Scot
get wrapster
Have you heard about Wrapster, the program that enables Napster to pass more then MP3 Files... We have too!!! Works great!!
Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 15:54:02 By: Scot
Gnutella Returns
I realize that AOL shut down Gnutella The Open Source Napster. Interesting things about Gnutella include the ability to change ports and create your own "Servant" connection. These Servant connections allow you to peer to peer, make direct connections or set up your own servers... Of course, I am telling you this and the Gnullsoft web site is no longer allowing anyone to download the beta program. The main reason for this is due to Gnullsoft / AOL's possible merger with Time Warner (protecting their interests big time). We don't have to worry about mergers on this site so we will provide the download for all you nerds to check out. gnutel048.exe 98k
www.y2knews.com
www.techticker.net
Gnutella: Impacting the Music is Free Concept
Gnutella Resource Center
Norwegian site with plentiful links to further information
slashdot.org thread (you'll be sorry...)
Information must be free!
freenet.sourceforge.net (the Manifesto mentioned in the WSJ article)
www.dailyphat.com
Napster hack allows free distribution of software, movies (John Borland) --and follow the links...