Open Source ‘Napster’ Resurrected After 8-Year Dormancy

“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.”

Complete Story