Today is the 9th anniversary of the WPN's users taking control of the WinMX Peer Network, on this day back in 2005 the community came together to work around the clock to figure out a way to allow the network to continue after Frontcode Technologies pulled the plug following a legal action threat.
The magic was achieved after only 3 days with help from many WinMX users and third party developers from around the globe, as some of you know the key part that was required for the peer caches was the primary network cryptographic signing key as without this the primary clients that make up the backbone of the WPN would be rejected by the rest of the network. This key and some example code for its usage was given to myself by a Japanese WinMX Protocol researcher called Mr Drac and was quickly passed to the community developers of the time. With the work of both Ramna and KM a new breed of peer caches where born, when this was combined with the client side host file fix that was suggested by Scyre and finalised by Sabre911and followed nearly immediately by an advanced dll patch by KM the community was back, and literally hundreds of thousands of happy voices where heard.
Since then we have seen many ups and downs and of late mainly downs, but regardless of our current situation, today is a special day and one we must never forget, its the story of how when in time of need the WinMX community rallied en masse and came together to fight for their friendships and in the story above whats not told is the wealth of help and assistance provided by many hundreds of others in creating web pages, opening new support sites, writing patch installers, the multitudes manning nearly every room and support forum to offer help to those in need following the collapse of the userbase, add to that number the teams of folks ensuring the word was out that WinMX was back on its feet and in many different languages and you may get some idea of the drive behind our community.
That day made me feel proud to belong to this community and I know was an emotional day for all of those that had been working hard to hold the network together as they saw the primary count dropping lower and lower by the hour, just when it seemed all was lost the work of many re-lit the flame for us all.
Thanks to all of the users who made a difference that day with their selfless assistance, you will not be forgotten by your fellow users.
Today we are in a different place and face a similar challenge to our home, I had wanted to deliver a finished WinMX community history so new users could read our history and know what has gone before them in the struggle, alas there has been no time to complete what is already a topic 8 pages long with more to follow, I also wished to announce a cure for our current malady but that too has not come to pass due to lack of developer time, for these failures I can only apologise and try to get our projects back on track, I do however ask something of all of you in return, this community wasn't saved by one or 2 folks it was saved by many hundreds of hands working together to fill the gaps and do what part of the work they where good at, nothing has changed in that respect, it will take many many of us to recover the lost ground and to work as a global community again to put matters right, and it will take time but if we all work together we can make that time shorter and all be proud that once again we saw a challenge to our community and stepped up to the line to do our part in defending it, the ourmx client project will continue until its ready for all of us to use without disappointment but when it is done we need once again to all put our efforts into refiring this network up, we can all take a part in the workload and help or we can become lazy and do nothing, being content only to snipe at those trying their best to keep our community alive, nows a good time to spend a few minutes thinking about which type of community we want here, one of friends whom we can all rely on or one filled with selfish folks who have nothing to offer but sour comments.
My personal thanks as always to the other staff here and those whom have been staff here for their unending support and time, thank you all from both myself and the wider community, you are winmxworld
