(Click to Enlarge)
The open-source file sharing application Shareaza has been going through some tough times lately. They had their domain hijacked by a company called Discordia Ltd. back in December 2007, which is the same company who turned Bearshare and iMesh into paid services. On the Shareaza.com site they then started offering an app called “Shareaza 4″ that promotes legal downloads. If a user installs the “new” Shareaza any older version of the real open-source application will be removed. Discordia has even gone as far as to file for a trademark registration for the Shareaza name. *sigh*
What does the Shareaza development team have up their sleeves now? They are actually working a new project that they’re calling Panther, and it’s slated for release on August 25th. It does everything that Shareaza is already capable of, plus some. Things like better BitTorrent support, skin support, not using the registry, and a revamped media player are all included.
Pre-release versions of Panther can be found here, but there are still quite a few bugs in it right now. As seen in the screenshot above there is still a lot packed into the program, but it’s tough to beat if you’re looking for an all-in-one file sharing solution that works on the BitTorrent, Gnutella1, Gnutella2, and ED2K networks. I’d just hold out until the official launch of Panther where it will likely be more polished than it is right now.
P.S. The real Shareaza homepage is now located on SourceForge’s servers.
[via TorrentFreak]
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Tags: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Web Sites, Applications, BitTorrent, File Sharing, Screenshots, Torrent
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So how can some company come in and take over (hijack) a domain and starting giving out their own software? Isn’t that illeagal?
I don’t know the exact details, but from what I gather the person who actually owned the domain was getting sued (in France I believe). In return for dropping the lawsuit the domain name was given up. I didn’t see any info on what the lawsuit was about though.
Oh I see, that is what happened. Looks like they are trying to find new ways to attack P2P users. The only thing I download is anime at times and Linux distributions. Thanks for the info.
The “new” Shareaza looks an awful lot like BearShare 6. It seems like that company is just trying to use the Shareaza brand to get its software onto as much computers as possible.
I think they took the wrong way starting a new project. Well, maybe this proyect could bring multi OS support, or has a cleaner code (I don’t really know) but it wouldn’t be easier if they continue improving shareaza and change its name if needed? The time that took making a new client with the same functionality could be used to implement kad or ares.
Yeah, that’s pretty much all they did.
I think they are smart for doing it now though, rather than wait a few months just to realize that you want to change the name anyway. That way they’ll get more publicity with the next release, and the new name will make its way out.