Quote:
Originally Posted by Jitensha
Wish I knew how to use Winny...I've tried in the past but no luck  |
From what I can tell, it's like the whole Napster/OpenNap issue - somewhat of a Catch-22. It doesn't help any that it doesn't seem to work properly on any Windows edition that isn't both XP, and set up with proper locality settings.
For those who aren't aware of the Napster/OpenNap issue, it goes something like this. In July of 2001,
RIAA v. Napster had just come to a head, with an injunction forcing the closure of the original Napster network. This caused a mass-exodus of users to a network of open-source, reverse-engineered Napster servers - OpenNap - which had been in active development since the late 90's. Problems arose when the RIAA - fresh from its victory against Napster - began to send Cease & Desist letters to the largest networks in early 2002, resulting in the closure of many of those premier destinations. Of course, they
also targeted a number of popular clients (anyone remember WinMX?), effectively driving their development teams underground and destroying further progress on those fronts. With the largest networks no longer operational, and the best clients no longer maintained, the vast majority of OpenNap users left the fold. There are still some fringe users running small-time OpenNap servers, but their existence is relatively closely held, and they have no publicity to the vast majority of the file-sharing world.
If WinNY suffered this same kind of network collapse after Kaneko's arrest, then it's a minor miracle that
anyone still uses it to trade files.