is a free ,
Ed2k Link s,
Piolet links, and the now deprecated Gnutella links. It was originally developed as closed-source freeware by
Michael Stokes , and is now
Open-source under the
GPL .
In late
2002 , Stokes introduced
Gnutella2 , a reworked version of
Gnutella with many fundamental updates to the protocol, and added support for it to Shareaza. This drew a lot of criticism from other ''Gnutella'' developers, because ''Gnutella2'' was developed without any outside help or conferral. However, the ''Gnutella2'' network has been doing well so far despite the fact that it was developed privately, and is now supported by Shareaza,
MLdonkey ,
Adagio ,
Gnucleus ,
Morpheus , and
IMesh among others. Opponents of the name "Gnutella2" refer to it as 'Mike's Protocol', or 'MP' for short.
On
1 June 2004 , Shareaza 2.0 was released, along with the source code, under the
GNU GPL , making it
Free Software . Version 2.1 was released on
19 September 2004 , and included many bug fixes including better support for Windows XP Service Pack 2.
The current stable version is 2.2.1.0 as of
October 26 ,
2005 ,
{Link without Title} .
Shareaza is available in 18 languages.
Users of Shareaza (along with
Azureus and
LimeWire ) have frequently been targeted in internet scams such as
Etomi that demand a "membership fee" for use of the software. A wide-spread version is "Kazaa Lite Pro", which also negatively influences the network.
Shareaza includes the following features which make it stand out (features which appear in most peer to peer clients are not listed):
- The ability to download the same file simultaneously from multiple networks.
- A basic interface or a very powerful mode is choosable, letting experienced users monitor the gnutella network and set advanced settings, while beginners aren't confused.
- , a feature allowing the grouping of many files into one 'collection', which is downloadable as an archive would be.
- Remote access - users are able to control Shareaza from a remote computer.
- Scheduler, which allows users to schedule tasks on Shareaza for a later period.
- Media Player - unlike some peer-to-peer software's media players, Shareaza's completely bypasses corruption and merges file chunks into one, creating a previewable video from virtually any amount of downloaded segments. This does not include sound in MPEGs however.
- Complete Unicode support, as well as numerous translations.
- The ability to 'skin' the interface, allowing users to change its appearance.
For criticisms regarding the Gnutella2 network, see Gnutella2 .
Despite its many innovative features, Shareaza has been criticized for many things, most notably
Creeping Featurism and
Software Bloat . While locally the client performs optimally, the Gnutella network implementation is somewhat outdated, leading to criticism of Shareaza for poor Gnutella support. Versions 2.1 and earlier are banned by Lugdunum eDonkey servers as a result of a bug which unintentionally use disproportionately large amount of server processing time, though this was quickly fixed once Lugdunum brought the issue forward. Similarly, some BitTorrent trackers ban Shareaza because they view it as a "
Leeching " client, however these trackers often ban large numbers of other clients, including
Azureus , for the same reason.
Many also criticise the developers for continuing to use Microsoft specific, proprietary tools in its development, now that it is an open source project. The current codebase heavily relies on both Microsoft Visual Studio and a Windows only graphics toolkit. Many Linux and Mac users have asked for a version that can run on other operating systems, but so far no one has stepped forward to work on a port to a more cross-platform design.
