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Software Operating Systems The Internet Windows

Shareaza 2.0 Released Under GPL 321

Posted by timothy from the runs-under-whatnow? dept.
RageEar writes "Today it was announced that the latest version of Shareaza, a popular P2P application for Windows, was released under the GPL. Currently the source code is hosted by the Shareaza servers, but the announcement makes mention of the code becoming a project on Sourceforge. The binaries are still available for Windows only, but I imagine it is only a matter of time before a Linux port emerges."
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Shareaza 2.0 Released Under GPL More

Shareaza 2.0 Released Under GPL

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  • on Linux/BSD? Do any ports currently exist?
    • I would imagine not....unless it builds nicely using winelib.

      I onlly have MacOS X in front of me, and I don't have winelib on here, so I can't try it on here. Anyone else? :P

    • Re:anybody compiled it yet (Score:5, Informative)

      by Izago909 ( 637084 ) <tauisgod@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:55PM (#9317048)
      Last time I checked in it was built on .NET. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, but if it is, some serious revisions must be made before it's truly cross platform.
      • There may be a way to port it using Mono?

      • Re:anybody compiled it yet (Score:5, Informative)

        by Nahor ( 41537 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:33PM (#9317459)
        No, it's not built on .NET, it's regular C++. It was programmed using Visual Studio .NET and uses MFC for the GUI.

  • a message from the riaa (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:47PM (#9316915)
    when you use file sharing apps the terrorists win

  • do we really want OSS P2P apps? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by musikit ( 716987 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:47PM (#9316919)
    don't get me wrong... i am all for OSS. i run linux and mac etc. however if the wire protocol is open wouldn't it be easier for RIAA/MPAA/USGOV/ISPs to look at the data and block certain traffic/file names to "cover their own ass" or have evidence to prosecute you?

    musikit equips tin-foil hat.

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nascar_Geek ( 682890 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:48PM (#9316930)
    And Worst Program Name of the Year goes to: These guys - for "Shareaza"

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lordDallan ( 685707 )
      I always thought the name was a play on Scheherazade, the heroine from "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights" [wikipedia.org].

      Kind of like she told a thousand stories, there are a thousand (metaphorically) adventures in P2P downloading awaiting you, oh humble user.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Funny)

      by tunabomber ( 259585 )
      Yeah, but what popular filesharing app DOESN'T have a vomit-inducing moniker?

      KaZaA - Might have been good, but then they alternated that case of the letters to make them look all quirky and fun.

      Morpheus/Grokster - Embarrassing misuse of hacker lingo.

      All the other *ster's - just ripoffs of Napster, which wasn't the greatest name to start with anyways.

      WinMX - Oooh! That name is so creative! No other piece of software ever used the Win prefix in its name to denote that it runs on Windows!

      eDonkey and its

    • nope (Score:2)

      by ragnar ( 3268 )
      Shareaza gets second place. The dumbest name has to be SubEthaEdit [codingmonkeys.de]. I like the program, but I can't recommend it to anyone because I hate to write the name or say it.

  • Linux port (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:48PM (#9316931)
    Cool, so finally I can get all the eyecandy and visual effects of Linux mixed with stability and performance of WinXP.

  • And Soon... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Azureflare ( 645778 )
    NOT on sourceforge.net. As soon as the DMCA notices arrive at sourceforge, it'll be taken down.

    This should be quite interesting to watch. Personally, I stopped using P2P apps because there's nothing I want these days. Also, I got one of those friendly notices from the MPAA, and I realized, that it seriously wasn't worth it.

    Any software I want, there's a free alternative for linux. None of the music that is coming out now interests me, so this p2p app is completely unappealing.

    • Re:And Soon... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Otto ( 17870 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:53PM (#9317018) Homepage Journal
      Shareaza doesn't do anything illegal. Doesn't contain any copyrighted code. There's no basis for a DMCA notice. It's just a P2P application, like many others that are also on sourceforge.
      • Sourceforge isn't going to debate that. If the DMCA notice arrives, they'll shut it down. Do you think they have the money/legal team to defend against lawsuits/questionable issues? I'm sure we all agree that the DMCA/lawsuits shouldn't be used against P2P apps. But we need the money to argue back...

        • Re:You miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Otto ( 17870 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:14PM (#9317263) Homepage Journal
          If the DMCA notice arrives...

          There's no *basis* upon which they can send a DMCA takedown notice.

          A DMCA takedown notice states, under penalty of perjury that the material in question is copyright infringing material and is owned by whomever is sending the notice.

          Sending a DMCA notice to someone is a legal document stating that the material you're bitching about is, in fact, owned by you or somebody you represent. If you don't in fact own that material, you just committed perjury and can be held liable for that.

          If somebody were so stupid as to send SF a DMCA notice for Shareaza, which is *known* to have been entirely written by this one guy who's putting it out there (he wrote it from scratch, he should know), then they'd be liable for a pretty easy countersuit.

          It won't be taken down anytime soon, methinks.
          • A DMCA takedown notice states, under penalty of perjury that the material in question is copyright infringing material and is owned by whomever is sending the notice.

            NO IT DOES NOT.

            For example the Dumbasses at Universal Studios (copyright holders of the movie U-571) did a general search for mpg files with 571 in the name and tossed off a pile of bogus DMCA takedowns such as this:
            Title: U-571
            Infringement Source: FTP
            Infringement Timestamp: 2/22/2003 12:15:00 AM
            Infringer Username: None
            Infringing Filename:

      • Re:And Soon... (Score:5, Informative)

        by PMcGovern ( 13300 ) * on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:03PM (#9317767)
        If we (SourceForge.net) receive a DMCA request, which doesn't happen often, we begin a process outlined in our Terms of Service [sourceforge.net]. We don't remove the project forever, only for a length of 10 days after the project admin has submitted a DMCA counter-claim.

        With the project 'PlayFair' [slashdot.org], the project admin never submitted a counter-claim...and hence the project was never restored.
        BTW: We host many p2p projects on SF.NET today.

        Pat-
        Pat@sf.net
        SourceForge.net
    • Correct me if I'm wrong but..., do the very P2P programs themselves violate any of the DMCA stuff?

      I think not, last time I checked giFT [sourceforge.net] was available...

      Now that I mention it, wouldn't it be more easier/feasible/comfortable to just write a plugin for giFT? To avoid and get rid of crappy WIND32 UI mannerisms, avoid GUI porting and just fire Poisoned (or whatever) away?

      dani++

    • NOT on sourceforge.net. As soon as the DMCA notices arrive at sourceforge, it'll be taken down.

      Yeah, except FreeNet [sourceforge.net] is still alive and kicking on SourceForge, despite all the publicity it's gotten. So is DC++ [sourceforge.net]. There are also many other filesharing apps hosted on SF that I won't even take the time to name.
      About the only thing Shareaza has to worry about is getting its donation box shutdown by PayPal [slashdot.org]. -If they plan to have a donation box, that is.

    • Re:And Soon... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bigberk ( 547360 )

      Any software I want, there's a free alternative for linux. None of the music that is coming out now interests me, so this p2p app is completely unappealing.

      I agree with what you say. In the *NIX world, all the software we need is free. I don't need to buy from $corp, in fact I don't even need to steal from $corp. My desktop Linux installation is compatible with my hardware, and works fine.

      Pop music has been a big disappointment for me, so now I only listen to my campus radio stations. I don't buy CDs

    • Re:And Soon... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anenga ( 529854 )
      As soon as the DMCA notices arrive at sourceforge, it'll be taken down.
      Just like eMule [sourceforge.net] (Or BitTorrent [sourceforge.net] for that matter), right?

  • That's funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by writertype ( 541679 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:49PM (#9316945)
    Because every time my friend uses Shareaza, he tells me that there's quite a bit of other content GPLed there too: music, games, movies...

  • Shareaza 2.0: Open Source (Score:4, Informative)

    by Compholio ( 770966 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:49PM (#9316947)
    Not to be cruel, but what makes Shareaza so cool that someone would go to the trouble to port it when we already have gtk-gnutella (http://gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net/) that supports Shareaza?

  • Winelib. (Score:4, Informative)

    by numbski ( 515011 ) * <numbski&hksilver,net> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:50PM (#9316967) Homepage Journal
    I know what everyone's thinking right now.

    d00dz! Build it for [Linux|*BSD|OSX]!

    Either lots of recoding needs to be done, or if you're REALLY lucky, it'll build using Winelib.

    I'd be interested to know if the latter works. ;)

  • Remote access (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xsupergr0verx ( 758121 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:50PM (#9316972)
    A new, very comprehensive "remote web access" feature allows full remote control of Shareaza's searches, downloads, uploads and networks from any web browser.
    That's what I am most excited for. Checking your downloads and searches while out of town for a few days or at school. Very useful indeed

    • Re:Remote access (Score:2, Informative)

      by NiteHaqr ( 29663 )
      Try the following combination

      Linux
      SSH
      screen
      btdownloadcurses

      Been doing it for ages........

    • Re:Remote access (Score:5, Funny)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:59PM (#9317085)
      Checking your downloads and searches while out of town for a few days or at school. Very useful indeed.

      Mostly for claiming that it was someone else that used your computer to do all that illegal downloading, not you. Right?
    • MLDonkey (an E-Donkey 2000 client) had web and a telnet interface for ages.
      (The telnet port is bound to localhost, so it is accessible only locally (so it is not a big, gaping sec. hole))

    • Try TermSvc or VNC (Score:5, Informative)

      by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:27PM (#9317386)
      If you are running Windows XP you can open TCP port 3389, or forward it to your machine from your router, and connect to it remotely using remote desktop (Terminal Services). The client can be found here [microsoft.com] . If you are using another OS or would rather use something more free try VNC [realvnc.com]. Personally I like Tight-VNC [tightvnc.com] as it offers the ability to add jpeg compression.

      I often use either of these to check my Bit Torrent downloads from work. Once you start using it you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Sometimes I find myself VNC'ing into a computer in the other room on my network at home just because sometimes I'm *that* lazy.
      • You're that lazy? I find myself VNCing to my desktop machine (connected to my TV 3 meters away) when I watch a movie to pause it or turn up the volume from my laptop over wireless so I don't have to get up off the couch.

  • API (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KoriaDesevis ( 781774 ) <koriadesevis@NosPaM.yahoo.com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:50PM (#9316977) Journal

    If the API used by P2P apps is open and documentation for it is readily available on the net (e.g. Gnutella protocol), does releasing this app as open source really prove much? The original Gnutella's source is still available and I would think this would be simpler to follow (was more of a simplistic implementation)...

    Hey, I won't argue with making it OpenSource, I think it's a positive thing either way. In this case, though, I don't see too much benefit if the goal is to create spinoffs. If the goal is to have community recommendations, that might be a little more beneficial...

    • Community bug-fixes would be very helpful. Although Shareaza was a good program when I last used it, there were some problems with the BT implementation.

  • Excellent! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Otto ( 17870 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:51PM (#9316984) Homepage Journal
    Now, hopefully, someone can fix the whacked out BitTorrent implementation.

    It works okay, but the way it uses the temporary files is just wonky. It downloads everything into a temporary file and then splits or copies the file when it's completed downloading. While this is fine in theory, in practice the problem is that the act of the splitting/copying is heavy on drive use, slows the whole system down, and generally is a PITA to deal with. Furthermore this makes it difficult to use other BT clients with the files, if you happen to want to use a different client in the middle of a download. You have to manually split the temp file apart using a separate tool or manually create a temporary file for Shareaza to use for the torrent.

    Why it can't use the standard create the files as you go method I don't know. I think it's because he just worked the protocol into raza using the existing codebase like the temporary files.
    • On the other hand, this method saves HD space. If you start a download of a 1GB file with some other programs, such as emule, a 1 GB temp file is created immediately. Shareaza's method requires only as many bytes of HD space as have been downloaded so far.
      • True, but at the same time, when it's done downloading, now you need twice as much drive space, at least temporarily, for it to copy/split the temp file into the original file.
  • Ever since the first few releases, people have been bugging Mike about releasing Shareaza as an open-source client. I guess he finally caved in. Now to use Shareaza to download... linux distros. Lots of ... linux distros!

  • MLDonkey (Score:5, Informative)

    by ptaff ( 165113 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @01:52PM (#9317007) Homepage
    Before you consider trying Shareaza, have a peek at MLDonkey [nongnu.org]. A nice multi-interface multi-protocol project done in Python that supports all that Shareaza supports and more.

    • Re:MLDonkey (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:04PM (#9317156)
      Not true, mldonkey is done in Ocaml [inria.fr].
    • OCaml indeed, my bad.

      Must wish unconsciously it was made in Python :)

    • MLDonkey written in OCAML [inria.fr], not Python.
    • Nice but no native binary Win32 port to download, plus the GUI is an extra download and not as easy to use as Shareaza.

      It needs two external libraries to download and compile as well.

      I doubt the average Windows User wants to compile a file sharing application and run it as a TSR Daemon and use a web Interface or external GUI interface to it.

      Compile it all into one binary package, thow in a setup wizard to update system files, and you might have a deal there.

    • I've been using MLDonkey for about 9mo now, and I couldn't be happier. It runs as a daemon in the background, so I don't have a fancy GUI repainting constantly while I'm doing other things. There's also a boatload frontends to it, from telnet and web-based (built-in) to Windows-native to GTK+ to KDE. Here is a better summary of the interfaces [berlios.de].

      Since the core is separate from the interface, you can administer your core from other hosts. Just run the interface and specify a hostname. For example, multiple peo

  • Limewire 4.0 recently came out, its been a GPLed OSS project for years. The Limewire teams works with the Gnutella Dev community to create open standards, and the limewire servent runs on all major platforms out of the box.

    I think its great that the Shareaza dev decided to GPL his code but it does not make up for the gnutella2 fiasco and domain hijack. [slashdot.org]

    • Don't be ridiculous. The domain wasn't "hijacked". Nobody owns gnutella, therefore there isn't anybody who had any more right to it than he did.

      OK, so he should have been more open with what he was doing. I think he likes to surprise people. That one just didn't work out quite as well as this one should do :)

  • Kudoes and all; but,... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Like2Byte ( 542992 ) <Like2Byte@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:00PM (#9317105) Homepage
    It's .NET source.

    From the vcproj file:

    VisualStudioProject
    ProjectType="Visual C++"
    Version="7.10"
    Name="Shareaza" ...

    Ugh.

  • A couple notes (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tweaker_Phreaker ( 310297 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:05PM (#9317169)
    Shareaza is heavily dependent on MFC libraries and so it will probably be a while before any ports pop up. For those wondering why anybody would want a port of Shareaza, well it has support for four file sharing protocols (Gnutella, Gnutella 2, ED2K, and Bit Torrent) and can simultaneously download parts of a file from each network as long as it has the needed hashes. So instead of running several clients to download all the files you want from different p2p networks, you can just use one program to do it all.

  • protocol (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:09PM (#9317218) Journal
    Would be better if they just published the protocol!
  • YAP2P?

    hope this doesn't divert quality OSS developers from truly useful products.

    ps: does this source code come with the all-important built-in hooks to gator?
    • YAP2P?

      hope this doesn't divert quality OSS developers from truly useful products.

      ps: does this source code come with the all-important built-in hooks to gator?

      Shareaza is a decent multi-protocol P2P program for Windows. It's BitTorrent and Gnutella handling is a bit borked, but hopefully open-sourcing it will help. And it's one of the P2P apps that never included spyware.

  • From the FAQ: Not compatible with Kazaa. (Score:5, Informative)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:20PM (#9317331)

    Shareaza wants to be the Gaim or Trillian of P2P, however they only support open-spec networks like edonkey, gnutella, and bit-torrent. From the FAQ on their Wiki [anenga.com]
    Will you add support for Kazaa?
    Short answer: No.
    Long Answer: Kazaa's network, known as FastTrack, is a closed network and requires hefty licensing fees to have access to. Shareaza is a non-profit/free project and thus can not pay for access to another network. If Shareaza reverse-engineered the network protocol, then it could be shut down because that is illegal.

    Basically, Shareaza could either pay thousands upon thousands of dollars a month to connect to FastTrack, or use it illegally and live with the high possibility of being sued by the operators of FastTrack for even more money.

    However if it can keep all of my bit torrent downloads in 1 easy to manage window with universal bandwidth management it may be worth it for just that.
    • However if it can keep all of my bit torrent downloads in 1 easy to manage window with universal bandwidth management it may be worth it for just that.

      I like Shareaza. It's swarming across multiple networks is a cool feature. But for BT downloads, it's not quite there yet, although it has potential.

      For managing multiple BT downloads, the current app I use is Azureus [sourceforge.net]. Written in Java, but nonetheless a good application with a lot of features. And far, far faster at BT than Shareaza.

  • And here comes the RIAA's illegal hacking... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TyrranzzX ( 617713 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:46PM (#9317592) Journal
    and the MPAA's, and the porn industries, and virus writers. This will be a good test of the viability of open source solutions for real-world security applications; real corporations have real economic incentive to destroy the networks, and now that the source is out and the lock is off, they're sure going to try.

    So says the king of tin-foil wearing freaks of nature!

  • ed2k link (Score:2, Funny)

    by fasura ( 169795 )
    ed2k://|file|Shareaza_2.0.0.0.exe|2617678|7e7dca19 e42f10d609e0aeddc7735d69|/

  • I only have one question (Score:3, Funny)

    by WildBeast ( 189336 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @04:40PM (#9318876) Journal
    Does it have pr0n? :)

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