A wonderful new piece of software developed by
Nullsoft (now
0wned by
the man @
AOL), the makers of
Winamp. It's
Napster's daddy, with the ability to share not only
mp3's but also all other
mainstream media and
archiving files. Based on a
distributed client/
sever model, it, unlike
Napster, is basically unstoppable in that it eats
firewalls for breakfast. All computers on Gnutella are interconnected and
servers themselves, so you never have to worry about being disconnected.
Currently a windows-only beta, it was designed to go Open Source at v1.0, but thanks to AOL gnutella will probably never see the light of day as non-betaware. Thankfully, a number of clones are already sprouting up, and soon you too will be downloading mp3's, warez, media, porn and just about any other high-bandwith medium from this little jewel. Problems with the current client include memory leakage, cpu utilization, and spamming by wannabe hackers.
head to gnutella.nerdherd.net or #gnutella for the skinny.