For those of you who are newish to the community OurMx is our attempt to replicate the winmx client as when the creator of this fine network left due to legal threats the entire userbase lost any capability to issue updates or additional features, obviously this was of little concern till one ex community member decided to publish research materials that showed some of the "holes" in the protocol, this then is why the network is crippled and we have been left in a bit of a state to say the least.
WinMxWorld has done its best over the years to gather up a small band of folks with the talent required to rebuild the client and whist its a bit ropey in some areas due to sub optimal programming it will in time firm up as the folks working on it improve their game. There has only been one public release and one further private release of OurMx due to the sheer quantity of things to fix up and complete, winmx itself took a skilled programmer many years to reach where it is and anyone looking into its history can see that creating and refining the core protocol and then translating the creators ideas into a finished product took many years, we do not have the advantage of any full time professional programmers but we continue to learn by our mistakes and work on each problem until we are happy with it, this work is mostly done over the weekends and some evenings and hasn't stopped in any major way, there have been times of little progress and times of faster progress depending on how many are working on the project, currently we are at the bare minimum but progress is still being made and annoyances put right as you would all expect.
Of late we have been working on a second layer of this major project, as you all should be aware its our aim to open source the final version of OurMx once we have ironed out as many bugs as we can, this includes both programming bugs as well as protocol bugs that are the source of the current attacks on the network, we cannot at this time release the existing primary network code as this could create a situation of apocalyptic annoyances, our path then has been to look at creating a spin off of the current ourmx client code for an entire secondary client to both gain more programming capability within the community and hand a stake in the communities future to the userbase.
In support of this we have been working on both improved documentation of the secondary protocol and firming up what we have to some sort of standard, also to assist those whom are new to the p2p developing arena we are working on small demo programs that offer a clear window into key aspects of winmx technology that cannot be found elsewhere on the web, as you all can guess this takes time and organisation and so whilst its frustrating and time consuming we are still at work on the original plan and are still making progress towards the end result.
I hope this fills in some of the gaps that seem to have opened up since we started the replication project, work will continue as always and our knowledge grows with every new feature, fix or tweak, when we are ready we will roll out the project in the professional manner you have come to expect from this volunteer run support site, we do not have a staff of thousands, hundreds or even tens of folks but we do care for this network and you our friends, this is more than just a P2P network for all of us its a place where those whom wish to communicate can do so without feeling oppressed, ashamed or embarrassed in presenting their true selves to the world without facing a harsh judgemental majority, this diversity of mentality is the core gold of winmx and we will continue to do our best to support the ideals and goals of all those whom have called this network home, friendship is the strongest bond of all and this alone ensures we all move ahead as one when the time is right, however long that takes.
