Author Topic: winmx community history (Read 9471 times)

silicon_toad2000 · « **on:** November 01, 2012, 04:33:14 am »

Hey all,

I'm thinking of putting together a bit of a history of the community and a timeline of the events that have shaped us and brought us to where we are now.

I wanted to make a thread for you guys to post up your recollections of key events in our history and I can build up a bit of a history from that.
Then we can make a history page.

I think the things the community has been through and survived is something we should all be proud of so we should outline it somewhere.

In 1999 many people where using a new style of program, one so different and radical it took off in a big way and changed the usage habits of virtually all internet users for at least the next ten years, I refer of course to Napster.
When Napster was forced to close following an ill fated legal battle with the recording industry many folks felt they had been allowed to glimpse the promised land in the shape of free music downloading and then suddenly a heavy veil had been closed back over it, preventing those same folks from further enjoying their new found source of aural gold, as is human nature this quickly focused efforts to emulate the missing service and create others in its place that complied with the law as it stood.

This then was the birth of the P2P explosion and we will focus here on one of those new applications and its history to the present day, buckle your seatbelts folks, its a bumpy ride !!

We fast forward to 2000 for our story, deep in Canada a software developer previously known only for database applications and small ancillary cryptographic programs had decided to create his own network client for the relatively new Open-Nap network ,once he had a basic client design put together he went on to create a company called "Frontcode Technologies" to become the public vehicle for his work, interestingly its also at this time he chose a pseudonym for himself, one shared by a popular musician also from Canada.

Open-Nap was a network with more than a passing resemblance to the famed Napster network,its name is believed to be derived from "open specification napster" (henceforth called Open-nap for short) however it had one or two prominent network architectural features that meant it did not rely on a single central server for the network to operate, instead it relied on many users acting as server operators and each server operator was able in effect to control what was up or downloaded and thus we saw the emergence of themed servers for specific musical tastes, this of course was a welcome enhancement for those searching for rare or otherwise obscure music.

WinMX started life as most programs do as a privately released "alpha" followed by a series of improving public "betas" beginning with the first public release of version 1.80 around the first few days of December 2000, this was a 1.5 MB sized offering, unfortunately an overlooked bug was quickly discovered and the release was hastily withdrawn, not a great start it seemed, but all was not lost...

On the 8th of December 2000 a hastily updated version (1.81) was released to the public, this too was a beta release and was good enough to gain much popular interest, at this time we have to remember WinMX was competing directly with other seasoned Open-nap clients and there was little patience for new ideas or features that the other clients did not have or broke with the new protocol specification in any way, especially from a newcomer. The 1.81 Version featured multiple filetype handling, not just mp3 (a common complaint with the original Napster) and many options to assist in setting up a network efficiently although the traditional look of the client that followed later on was not to be found yet, instead users had a floating toolbar of icons and those in turn opened multiple floating windows that could be parked anywhere across the desktop. Some hints of the beginnings of the later popular display format can be seen in the library and setup wizard.

A full 3 months passed before users got their hands on the next release of WinMX, 2.00 had hit the streets on the 8th of march. Much publicity had been drummed up in the meantime by users of the original client release who had in many cases sent in ideas, feature requests and network improving concepts to the developer for possible inclusion in the client, although at this stage it was not immediately clear that any changes had taken place aside from some bug fixes and a quantity of small changes designed to make the client more stable and efficient.

April 22 2005, Winmxworld forum opened

September 13 2005, Cease and desist letter received by Frontcode
September 21 2005, Frontcode servers and website shut down
September 24 2005, Polini, Ranma and Sabre release Host file on P2PZone.net
June 29 2007, KM closes winmxgroup and pulls the dns
September 23 2008, independent community patch released
October 1st 2010, the MXPie.Info team leave sabre to his own caches, forming Winmx4U and join with winmxworld in supporting the independant community patch
May 2011, Network attacks start

GhostShip · « **Reply #1 on:** November 08, 2012, 11:39:04 pm »

Here's a starter for your collection Silicon

Quote

In 1999 many people where using a new style of program, one so different and radical it took off in a big way and changed the usage habits of virtually all internet users for at least the next ten years, I refer of course to Napster.
When Napster was forced to close following an ill fated legal battle with the recording industry many folks felt they had been allowed to glimpse the promised land in the shape of free music downloading and then suddenly a heavy veil had been closed back over it, preventing those same folks from further enjoying their new found source of aural gold, as is human nature this quickly focused efforts to emulate the missing service and create others in its place that complied with the law as it stood.

This then was the birth of the P2P explosion and we will focus here on one of those new applications and its history to the present day, buckle your seatbelts folks, its a bumpy ride !!

We fast forward to 2000 for our story, deep in Canada a software developer previously known only for database applications and small ancillary cryptographic programs had decided to create his own network client for the relatively new Open-Nap network ,once he had a basic client design put together he went on to create a company called "Frontcode Technologies" to become the public vehicle for his work, interestingly its also at this time he chose a pseudonym for himself, one shared by a popular musician also from Canada.

Open-Nap was a network with more than a passing resemblance to the famed Napster network,its name is believed to be derived from "open specification napster" (henceforth called Open-nap for short) however it had one or two prominent network architectural features that meant it did not rely on a single central server for the network to operate, instead it relied on many users acting as server operators and each server operator was able in effect to control what was up or downloaded and thus we saw the emergence of themed servers for specific musical tastes, this of course was a welcome enhancement for those searching for rare or otherwise obscure music.

WinMX started life as most programs do as a privately released "alpha" followed by a series of improving public "betas" beginning with the first public release of version 1.80 around the first few days of December 2000, this was a 1.5 MB sized offering, unfortunately an overlooked bug was quickly discovered and the release was hastily withdrawn, not a great start it seemed, but all was not lost...

On the 8th of December 2000 a hastily updated version (1.81) was released to the public, this too was a beta release and was good enough to gain much popular interest, at this time we have to remember WinMX was competing directly with other seasoned Open-nap clients and there was little patience for new ideas or features that the other clients did not have or broke with the new protocol specification in any way, especially from a newcomer. The 1.81 Version featured multiple filetype handling, not just mp3 (a common complaint with the original Napster) and many options to assist in setting up a network efficiently although the traditional look of the client that followed later on was not to be found yet, instead users had a floating toolbar of icons and those in turn opened multiple floating windows that could be parked anywhere across the desktop. Some hints of the beginnings of the later popular display format can be seen in the library and setup wizard.

A full 3 months passed before users got their hands on the next release of WinMX, 2.00 had hit the streets on the 8th of march. Much publicity had been drummed up in the meantime by users of the original client release who had in many cases sent in ideas, feature requests and network improving concepts to the developer for possible inclusion in the client, although at this stage it was not immediately clear that any changes had taken place aside from some bug fixes and a quantity of small changes designed to make the client more stable and efficient.

GhostShip · « **Reply #2 on:** February 03, 2013, 04:59:00 pm »

Silicon has had some further parts of his history project sent to him but he is still seeking further stories anecdotes and anything you feel might be worth including in the history of our commnunity, if you want to see your part of the story or even what the community is about for you please send him further material and he will collate and edit it into the final draft he is working on, thank to all those who have already made the effort and thanks to those of you who are about to

PS: When I spoke to him last he was mentioning a section regarding Vladds and how that got rolling and some of the key players back in the early days , if you feel your able to write something up then I'm sure he will be very happy to set it amongst the rest of the material he has, this has the feeling of being a grand project and I cant wait to get reading myself

GhostShip · « **Reply #3 on:** July 18, 2013, 08:48:42 pm »

*** BUMP ***

This project is half completed but requires further input from the community, if you want folks to read about your story and what winmx was about when you joined the network and all the unfolding drama and events then please either post here or send to Silicon so he can add your story to the others that are there, some parts of the history have not been written so perhaps you will be the first or maybe only contributor for that section

Come on folks lets see some of that talent I keep telling folks we have in the community

GhostShip · « **Reply #4 on:** December 13, 2013, 01:28:27 am »

This project is still under way so I suppose this is the last call for further contributions and remember folks those who do add their stories to the history will be credited and be the first to read it when its done, it cant get better than that

GhostShip · « **Reply #5 on:** March 15, 2014, 05:47:32 pm »

I think it looks like we have gleaned all the community input we can from these forum calls and so Toad will be doing the final collation of the contributions and I believe we will see a staggered release soon, maybe one part a week or something like that, I have to say I myself was expecting many more community contributions but Silicon will do his best with what he has,

Once again a big thank you to all of those whom have sent in their memories of the communities history and to Silicon for spending his time working on it for us all

GhostShip · « **Reply #6 on:** October 03, 2015, 04:45:45 pm »

I noticed this topic has more traffic than the actual history so I have placed a link here to ensure its accessible, if you have any topic you wish to expand upon or note your place in the communities history , feel free to drop us a line here as we think theres a lot more to add, cheers folks.

https://www.winmxworld.com/tutorials/the_complete_winmx_history.html

GhostShip · « **Reply #7 on:** September 07, 2019, 10:47:21 am »

I will have some holiday time soon and wish to get some new material in the bag in regards to our history project, I want to hear from anyone who can fill up any of the gaps in the communities history or has a story that we can fit in that revolves around the communities activities across the last 19 years , I will clean up and edit any submissions so dont be shy about spelling etc , share your tales of winmx history and any events while you can still remember them.

I nearly forgot

post them to me using the site messaging feature or in this topic, please take note submissions should be informative and as upbeat as you can make them as I like a happy read, that said you should make sure you include as much information as you can for inclusion so we can get more pages on history and folks can read elements of the community history that we are currently misiing. cheers folks