“Nullsoft programmers, operating under the moniker Gnullsoft,
have released a new open-source Napster-esque program that’s bound
to aggravate an already tense situation in the music industry.”
“Gnutella (a name that sounds like that of a fudgey breakfast
spread favored by Europeans) will be licensed under the open-source
GNU GPL license and claims a host of new features that may cause as
many problems for the industry as it solves for users. Other
open-source Napster-related projects include gnome-napster and
gnap.”
“Unlike Napster, Gnutella doesn’t require central servers,
so there’s no tracking of any file sharing going on through the
program. Rather, the program relies on client-to-client
communication. A song file query goes from one client to the
next, creating a tree. Each client reports back to the individual
making the query it there are any matches against the song
search.”