"The team says the open source OpenNap 2.0, still under development, will ignore “copyrighted” music files in an attempt to avoid the sort of RIAA scrutiny that shut down the original Napster and its open source clone, the first OpenNap. They don’t seem totally clear on how to do this — only that it’s worth doing because when the first Napster came into being, no licensed online source offered a comprehensive catalog of music. Given today’s legitimate online music marketplace, these guys think it’s time for a non-infringing descendant of Napster.
"Project lead Wayne Facer, a fan of the original Napster who was not involved in the earlier OpenNap iteration, said he and two other open source programmers have taken over the project on SourceForge.net after trying unsuccessfully to contact its original developers, and are rewriting the code from the ground up to run on new operating systems like Apple OS X, Linux, Open Solaris, Windows 7, and Haiku — and to add copyright observance. They expect to have the new servers and clients up and running some time next year."
