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Fairwell (again) OpenNap …

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- OpenNap suffered the same fate as Napster, closing shop after being threatened by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA, but it’s now being brought back to life as OpenNap 2.0 and is slated to start development next year, said p2pet at the start of the month, also noting:

“But only if it satisfies the RIAA.”

Many (most?) p2pnet readers were, well, just a little skeptical.

Observed Spike »»»

The OpenNap protocol was never shut down, contrary to what the revival states. Some OpenNap/SlavaNap servers still exist, look for them on http://gotnap.com
I still connect to a certain OpenNap server to speak to all my oldtime online friends (known for 10+ years to this day).

This revival looks to be some kind of joke, its as if some idiot got access to the original OpenNap sourceforge account somehow.

“Looks like utter bullshit to me, especially the removal of former packages,” said another comment. “Anyway, there are plenty of copies on ftp servers all around the world, and there`s still an updated fork of OpenNap at http://opennap-ng.sourceforge.net/.”

Said Biff »»»

Here they say Original downloads of the OpenNap protcol have been removed and destroyed to comply with the RIAA legal challenge. No attempt will be made to use the original code. Yet on the revamped page at opennap.sourceforge.net, they say We also wish to acknowledge the work of DrScholl. He was the original programmer and developer of the original OpenNap. Without this work we couldn`t proceed on a new version. Not using the original code? :lol:

Be sure to go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/opennap/ and leave a nice, cheesy honest review!

Quartz said he had, “archived copies of opennap software and src`s from 3 years ago when I decided no ‘midnight bureaucrat’ was going to steal anything from me in terms of big brother style historical reworkings and disappearing software, continuing »»»

This has more the look of a hijacked page than any real substance to it it , the grammar is poor and as for the protocol if they are changing it then its not opennap its a cheap knock off, I know hundreds of opennap users and they are probably lauging at this lame attempt to hijack the name of the network they use by some group of riaa suck-ups.
For those who don`t understand what open nap is its whats called a centralised network because all the indexing is done by a single users machine and thus such networks have fallen out of favour after a few folks where sued for being the server operator some years ago, its still alive as a semi-underground network and using the slavanap software folk have been able to lock their servers together to create a bigger network, however in legal terms they are a liability as the server operator is directly facilitating infringement and a court can be shown he is able to see who s downloading what and when so if there is some effort to improve that aspect I,m all for it but then be sure we shouldn`t call it opennap and nor should it be centralised in the current fashion.

Responded OpenNap Devel

First I wish to address that we are aware of problems on the page. There are problems yes. Is there going to be a rewrite, yes.

We have not hijacked the domain. We are members of sourceforge and wanted to do something about an application which was not updated in a long time. There are going to be problems along the way.

If there are still systems using it then we want to know about it so that we can post it on our page. We also want to contribute updates for those programs using it. Over the weekend we have made some changes which may appease some of you. While we recognize that we cannot appease everyone, we will do what we can to make sure that everyone knows our real intent.

In the next few weeks we will be releasing updated versions of the OpenNap program. Beginning with version 0.44.1 which we took apart and cleaned it up. We made it more compatible with today`s compilers and made it a bit faster. We have no plans right now to include anything new until we start development on version 0.50. For reference purposes we have 0.44 still on the code and have restored the original link.

There`s also complaints that we didn`t recognize DRScholls work. We did and have such have made it clear that his name must be associated with any updates as well as documentation.

We will also merge it with OpenNap NG. We don`t know if it`s still being updated but if it is we can and will use it. From there we will proceed with the updates.

All of us take this project seriously. This is not a LAME JOKE to use this name and have it mean something else. We want to do this and make it work for everyone. If you wish to help out on this project then help out.

And then, on Thursday, “”As of November 26, OpenNap will be shut down,” said OpenNap Devel, adding:

” You win but in a way we all lose. I`ve taken the liberty of removing all technical information from the page as well as the source code. While the code is still circulating out there, the original page housing it will be taken down.

“Sorry you think it was a joke but then again, I guess we have the last laugh afterall.”

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

p2pet – OpenNap P2P file sharing returns , November 4, 2009

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Quartz Says:
November 5th, 2009 at 3:18 pm editI have archived copies of opennap software and src`s from 3 years ago when I decided no midnight bureaucrat was going to steal anything from me in terms of big brother style historical reworkings and disappearing software.

This has more the look of a hijacked page than any real substance to it it , the grammar is poor and as for the protocol if they are changing it then its not opennap its a cheap knock off, I know hundreds of opennap users and they are probably lauging at this lame attempt to hijack the name of the network they use by some group of riaa suck-ups.
For those who don`t understand what open nap is its whats called a centralised network because all the indexing is done by a single users machine and thus such networks have fallen out of favour after a few folks where sued for being the server operator some years ago, its still alive as a semi-underground network and using the slavanap software folk have been able to lock their servers together to create a bigger network, however in legal terms they are a liability as the server operator is directly facilitating infringement and a court can be shown he is able to see who s downloading what and when so if there is some effort to improve that aspect I,m all for it but then be sure we shouldn`t call it opennap and nor should it be centralised in the current fashion.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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15 Responses to “Fairwell (again) OpenNap …”

Reader's Write Says:
November 14th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
So the “current maintainer” of the project took control and all he found to do is removing existing tarballs and announcing a project that would comply with every caprice of the mafiaa. To put it bluntly, only destruction and empty words (that sound bad, so fortunately empty words only). And you were expecting positive comments with that?

Now, what about leaving the project site as you found it before leaving and doing your stuff elsewhere? Doing the contrary would only prove that you never respected the original OpenNap and never intended to do something for the community to begin with. I’m sure you’ll delete everything, but if you don’t I’d happily apologize here.
Reader's Write Says:
November 14th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Shameful, just shameful that it’s come to this. I was a user of the original Napster and OpenNap. Stopped using OpenNap after getting one of those RIAA notices. Thought OpenNap was gone for good. Guess I was right. The first napster was good but I don’t like what it’s become.

Also heard about the RIAA shutting down an entire town because one person downloaded a movie. What is going on here?

Saw an archive of the original opennap page. I do agree that it needed an update but if nobody is using it, then why bother. I use other program like Limewire or Bittorrents myself.

BTW: I wanted to get both points of view and figured someone needed to say something positive about this.
Reader's Write Says:
November 14th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
“. . .stopped using OpenNap after getting one of those RIAA notices.”

Sending notices to people is dangerous.
Reader's Write Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I only have one question. Going through these archives now I’ve noticed that nobody updated the program since 2001. Yet there have been alot of fixes but no releases. We also saw the fork OpenNap-NG which according to its webpage hasn’t been updated since 2005. So why is everyone complaining about a program which hasn’t been updated since 2001? I think if the project owner wanted to take it down, they had the right to do so. Even worse is when the original author abandoned the page and couldn’t be contacted.
Reader's Write Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
“The project owner”? What has he contributed so far? He just got a password and erased everything, that’s all. Sorry but I fail to see why a random idiot should have the right to take “the liberty” of taking the entire site down as his sole contribution. Why delete everything to begin with? Because he acted like an idiot and when people criticized him he added childish behavior to his idiocy? Needless to say things would have been different if he had kept the archives and contributed something interesting.

Besides, there are still OpenNap servers around with more than 20000 users, so it’s still being used even if drscholl abandoned the project. That’s the beauty of free software, server admins keep playing with it, making changes when they think it’s necessary.

Finally, as for the last laugh the so called “developer” or “owner” was talking about, Archive.org has a copy of the tech doc. Who’s laughing now?
Reader's Write Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Come on people, where were you when nobody updated the original code? Granted there are other better sites out there. Maybe the new author wants to take it down and start on something new. Itâs their right to do so. If the original author orphaned the project and the new project owner didn’t want to use it, shouldn’t the original page be locked out or changes would be prevented? On the other hand maybe the new project owner didn’t want or need to use the old code and had something better. We will never know.

I was able to find the technical specs on it so it’s not gone for good. The old page is gone but alteast it still lives and never will die.

BTW: I wouldn’t have advertised that there are over 20,000 users. The RIAA could be watching
Reader's Write Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
LOL. Search for “nap.txt”. It’s all over the web. Enjoy your last laugh, whoever the hell you are.
drogoh Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Although the original project had been dormant for many years, those who forked the work had done so out of a respect to not do something like this. The modifications done with the two (yes, two) forks that called themselves OpenNap-NG were different visions and different modifications to the code, but they both could trace their roots back to the original OpenNap project. What Wayne Facer did by getting access to the original project and subsequently removing it due to the criticism that would have inevitably been received by the remnants of a once thriving community is a disgrace to drscholl’s work.

If Wayne Facer was so intent on developing an open source Napster server using OpenNap as its base, he could have very well done so by creating his own project and calling it something other than OpenNap. When drscholl went dormant and the community shrunk to what is left, the project itself became more of a museum exhibit than an actual feasible project. Wayne Facer should have acknowledged this and left well enough alone. I’ll give you a B for effort and an F for failure to acknowledge any historic significance of leaving the original work intact.
Reader's Write Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
But here’s another question. If the project was dormant, why would anybody get access to it. Sourceforge should have locked out the page and prevented anybody from gaining control of it. There’s alot of fault to go around so I wouldn’t criticize one person for doing what they thought was right. Maybe it will go on we don’t know. Maybe other people are working on it but don’t want to be recognized. Remember OpenNap and other versions (including SlavaNap) are still under watch of the RIAA. Perhaps they wanted to make sure that the old code was removed. Maybe the current owners (Best Buy) don’t want any copies of their proprietary software or older versions of their software to be examined.

I stopped using it because it was outdated and the threats of legal action were looming. If people would get together and work on updating these old projects we wouldn’t have any problems. Do you see anybody complaining about old linux code or C code not being used? Do you see people complaining about Windows 2 when Windows 7 is out the door?

I’m not saying it was wrong, it was. I was able to find the old technical info out there and maybe someone else will put it on a new web page.
drogoh Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
OpenNap was not proprietary at all. It was a reverse engineering of the original Napster protocol. Napster, Inc. never had any real involvement in it, so Best Buy has no involvement with OpenNap.

What Wayne Facer did may have been, to him, in good intentions. However, as an important piece of peer2peer history, I believe that OpenNap in its original form needs to be preserved. Without preservation, it becomes lost to all.

Since Facer had deleted the project outright, I re-registered it and have been trying to restore what I can piecemeal. Unfortunately, there is a plethora of information that may very well be lost for good, thanks to him.
Reader's Write Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
DroGoh:

Want a hand in replacing it? Might be able to help. I still have the original webpage in it’s original form as well as older forms too. Don’t have the technical info but I do have most of the documents, release 0.44 of the source code and that’s about it.
Reader's Write Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Good thing you are going to replace it. Who is going to use it though? I know the tech specs are out there. Would the DMCA come into effect here since the code does reengineer a working application which is now owned by Napster Inc? I’m not a lawyer but this could come into question. But then a piece of history can be preserved.

Wish the original Napster source code could be displayed but I doubt it will happen.
Reader's Write Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
sorry, should have said “napster.txt”
Biff Says:
November 18th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Looks good! Figure out how to get Facer’s “reviews” off of there and it’s perfect….
Reader's Write Says:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Why not wipe out all reviews and start fresh? If you’re going to restart, might as well start clean.

ONLY items referencing the post at hand, please. No links to personal sites, no personal attacks, trolling, freebie advertising, or off-topic posts. Thanks. And Cheers!

Fairwell (again) OpenNap …

15 Responses to “Fairwell (again) OpenNap …”

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