Discussion about Winmx Patch and Should It Be Open Or Closed Source ?

[Bearded Blunder]

as i said elsewhere.. how dramatically different can the method be?

you have to intercept a dns lookup & do a different one instead
(can only do this by intercepting a dns lookup & making a different one)

you have to load a "bad ip" list from someplace
(this could be secure or not, but prolly harder to make insecure than secure, does need to be spoof-proof blocking 0.0.0.0-255.255.255.255 might be undesirable)

you have to prevent IPs on that list connecting as secondaries

you have to intercept search results (which will always be search results, althgough macrovision might flood malformed/mangled ones if they saw an exploit that could be used doing that) & drop those originating from ips on your "bad ip" list

since you're always loading / intercepting the same data, of the same data type & manipulating in the same fashion

i fail to see HUGE scope from doing things vastly differently from KM's "unsafe method"...

does this mean nobby's provisional yes actually means "probably no" ???

[GhostShip]

Please stop misleading readers Merlin you have had the difference in the patch methods explained to you, one using Primary TCP and the other using Primary UDP, if your unable to grasp this difference then please take the time to read up on the subject.

3 posts from yourself and 4 from Hell is sort of abusing the "vote" thread for many.

[Bearded Blunder]

someone hammering at me with abstruse technical jargon when i'm getting ready for bed does not constitute an explanation

[GhostShip]

I fail to see how that explains the fact you have myself on your MSN and have made no efforts to contact me to clear up any points of concern at any time.

[Bearded Blunder]

we have few shared contacts, or i'd suggest you did a straw poll of them asking how often i actually start conversations with anyone (almost never)..  i'm always afraid i'll pick an inconvenient moment

this has been aggravated recently by the fact i've not been around much when your status has been set to "online"

and furthur aggravated by the fact i've been somewhat distracted with ppl here being carted off for surgery & having to be shuttled back & forth to hospital to have dressings changed

chances for possibly protracted conversations when you've shown "online" rather than "offline", "away" or "busy" have been somewhat scarce

[GhostShip]

Whilst I cannot say anything regarding your family circle as I agree they take priority in all cases, I am merely pointing out you have had the opportunity of privileged access to information and yet seem more concerned with making allegations than ascertaining whether your allegations have foundation.

It should at least been possible for you to have PM,ed me to raise any factual concerns if you in fact had any, over a week ago.

[Le Wombat]

Hallo All

Been Reading The Whys And Wherefores For A Few Days Now. Trying to Make My Mind Up
One Way Or Another. I've Read All The He Did She Did Or didn't BS And been Trying To Read
Between The Lines. Still Don't Really Have Enough Info To Make A Half Educated Decision As Yet?

I Guess I Wish I Had A time Machine And Could Turn The Clock Back A Month Or Two. Since The
Big Bang KM Wrote Patch (Closed Source) Everything OK. MH,GS,KM,BUG,HELL And Everyone
Else (Sorry If I Didn't Mention You) Helping Users, Everything OK. GS Posts Some Time Ago About
Moving The Network Forward. Inhouse Negotiations, KM Upset About Something And Spat The
Dummy. BB Also Spat It Big Time. Everyone Flaming Everyone Else. Everything NOT OK.

The List Of Upset Admins And helpers Grows Daily. After 15 Pages Of Abusive Posts From Both
Sides Of The Fence Still No Real Info Available to Make An informed Decision. Only Inuendo And
Rumours, Scaremongering, etc...

What Happened To Turn This Great Site Into This Crock Of Sh** . 

Don't Know But Seems To Be  A Bit Of Dejavu Happening Here.

I Understand The Passion On Both Sides All Fighting To Keep MX Alive But Thats Always Been
There. The Difference Now Is That Instead Of Pulling Together You Are Now Pulling In
Opposite Directions So Instead Of growing The Network You Are suceeding in Shrinking It.

I Myself Personally Didn't Mind It With KM At The Helm. Didn't Care If Patch Was Open Or
Closed. As Long As It Worked And It Sure Did That. Also I Personally Didn't Have A Problem
With KM. There Was No Misunderstanding Him. Probably Not Politically Correct Enough For
Todays World. Better The Devil You Know Than The Devil Ya Don't.

I Do Sympathize With The Mods Of This Site. Dammed If Ya Do Dammed If Ya Don't. Whilst
Trying To Be Open And Fair And Allowing Constuctive critisism (Bordering On Abuse) There
Appears To Be Secrecy Regarding The New Patch.

Seems A Bit Hypocritical Here : A New OPEN SOURCE PATCH So There Can Be No Back Doors
Or Hacks Secretly Programmed Into It.... YET There Is So Much Secrecy About Who Is Doing
It And What They Are Doing... Ya Can't Be Honest One End And Not The Other.

I Think We Still Live In A Democracy, Well most Of Us Anyway...

I Think Deep down 99% Of yu Want The Best For The Community Its Just Pride, Bullshit
And Secrecy That Gets In The Way.

My View On Growing The Network Would Have Been keep Doing The Fantastic Job That
You All Were Doing. Eventually You Would Have All The Users Back. You Really Were The
Best Help Team There Was. Now Its more Like Iraq with All The Different Factions Fighting
For Control. The RIAA Just Waiting in The Wings To Pick Up the Pieces.

MY THOUGHTS

KM Keep Making Patches To Block The RIAA (Closed Source Or Open)
MH,GS,BB,MD,BUG,HELL etc Get Back to Helping PPL (Your Talents Are Needed Here)

Forget About Steak & Kidney Or Chicken Pies They Join The Strength When The Time Is right

SO I GUESS I'M IN FAVOUR OF A CLOSED SOURCE WRITTEN BY KM THAT WILL ALLOW
PIE SECONDARIES TO CONNECT BUT BLOCK THE FLOODERS AND EVERYONE GET BACK
TO THE JOB OF GROWING THE NETWORK WITHOUT ALL THIS FIGHTING

YES KM Could DO THIS I Think





 

[vince]

well open   or closed  as long as it works  with less problems   hey guys  remember  this is winmx  and we want to try to keep it growning, isnt that the point.  And yes i understand  that not enough gradatude is givein   SO ON BEHALF OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE ROOMS I PARK IN I WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL THE PEOPLE WHO HAS WORKED HARD TO KEEP WINMX WORKING   now that it has been said   yes we argue  and fight  like a big family does from time to time   but we all need to keep our eyes on the prize and that is to keep winmx working and growning .   yes i understand that form time to time we get frustrated, angered, agressive, anmd disapointed  when things dont go the way we think it should go  but;  we are human and can only learn form making mistakes!   Thank you for takeing the time to read this   with typos  and all   LOL   

[ñòóKýçrÕôK]

I voted not sure. Honestly I think if the patch is opensource  then no matter how much you can claim it's unbreakable it's still breakable as time has proven over n over again. Could opensource make the network stronger? Yes I think it could in many ways. Somewhere out there is someone smarter than all of us put together and say this person reads the source and says "you know what? this could do so much better as scuh way." . And wham you now have a superb patch. And yes, 2 of the groups working somewhat together can collectively do more than 2 seperated groups. Proven fact. More manpower = more productivity. Can it hurt the network? Yes I say without a doubt it can. The only reason most things go unbroken is because noone USUALLY tries to fix them when they aren't unless they want to break it. If it fails and it gets broken it will most likely be unrecoverable. Other day I had a woman come in looking for help. Simple router config would've fixed her but she also told me she was using pie patch 3.5. I suggested that she use the dll patch to ensure she had the best filtering and blocking chances she could have. Her explaination to me is "I'm on patch 3.5! Why would I want to go back to a 3.0 patch?" To her the patch didn't matter as long as it worked.I didn't push or force the issue, but I still tried to help. My point being is if we go with an opensource patch and it fails and the cartel find a way to screw the pooch on it, good luck going back to our current solution. Most aren't gonna fool with it and we'll be out new users and old alike. Open or closed I feel not for me to decide because honestly even if you pointed out why my insecurities are unwarrented I wouldn't have the first clue what I was looking at. So I'll cross my fingers, hope for a good choice, and wait and see like all the rest.
I wanted to add, if both parties interested could see the source of the patch and know its inner workings, then where is the harm in keeping the source to ourselves as long as WE know it's good, and WE know it works?

[]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[.]

i agree with you on most points there nookycrook except the more manpower = more productivity
whilst in basic production this may be true but we are talking a intricate patch here so its not productivity we need  but quality & adding more ppl to it is all well and good but its getting the right ppl that will achive the results not just joining forces with existing ppl who made an inferiour patch to the existing one.
new ppl working on it is fine but only if they can add to the tallent already working on it if this is not the case it sure dosent bode well to make it open source as this would also mean open to exploitation by those that would jump at the chance to do so just to prove a point & we all know that is a distinct possibility based on recent events
closed source fine...... open source then make sure to get the right tallent to make it safe as humanly possible otherwise its one step forward and two back

[Cobra]

I voted Not Sure because I don't have enough knowledge of the workings within to give a definitive Yes or No. Anything can be exploited. Just look at Microsoft products, and they aren't even open source!


I do tend to err on the side of caution, so I would definitely say No 100% before I said Yes 100%. Many good projects have flourished through open sourcing, but open-sourced products are not always the best for a layman to download (and the WinMX network has a flood of them).

Assume that I am brand new to WinMX because I heard about it from a friend yesterday and know little about computers. My friend (who isn't new but paid no attention to the fact that it was open source) tells me "You will have to download a patch first to get it to work because the original program was shut down years ago." Ok. Fine. I search the web for "WinMX patch". Lo and behold there are so many links to choose from! I pick one of the first ones at random, find the patch on that website, download and install it and I'm up and running! Yay!

.... But what I wasn't told is that this website is run by someone who modified the source code adding a Trojan horse that sent him my personal data, passwords, and whatever else. What's worse is that I allowed this to happen freely and with my consent (in a way) because I lowered my firewall to have access to WinMX and assuming that it was just one of the necessary steps.

I wouldn't want that to happen to anyone. Does that make sense?

[art-666]

I say open
just modding the host is open and its down to you to stop the flooders. ect..
as we have been told KM was posting our details and reaches on his site.
so if it's closed, it's still not known whats going out.

[White Stripes]

i say leave it -closed-... because of the RIAA et al. and the enormous amount of scam sites...

[bughunter]

makes no difference if its closed or open.........
nothing stopping the cartel from sending any patch to berkley for analysis by people far smarter then km will ever be, and i mean no disrespect to km about that statement either, its just fact........
not to mention there is already plenty of source code in the public domain released by bender etc that anyone who knows there stuff could piece together the hows and the whys............
so even if the new patch goes open source its unlikely it will reveal anything that the cartel dont already know.......
so this whole open closed source code is just a smoke screen, in that it makes no real difference in denying the cartel any information that might or could prove usefull..................

[..Ñøßߥ..]

makes no difference if its closed or open.........
nothing stopping the cartel from sending any patch to berkley for analysis by people far smarter then km will ever be, and i mean no disrespect to km about that statement either, its just fact........
not to mention there is already plenty of source code in the public domain released by bender etc that anyone who knows there stuff could piece together the hows and the whys............
so even if the new patch goes open source its unlikely it will reveal anything that the cartel dont already know.......
so this whole open closed source code is just a smoke screen, in that it makes no real difference in denying the cartel any information that might or could prove usefull..................

Oh dear god, now im agreeing with Bughunter, its the truth though, it stands to reason the cartel are more than likely to already know all there is to know about Winmx, as i have already said they didnt create the flooding tools and connection software by luck.

[TheMacDaddy]

I totally agree with both of these posts here
Hence why i see no vaild reason not to be open scr on the new patch
And lets face it if we try and claim it cant be open scr incase theres a flaw then i would have to wonder just how many apps out there would of never been made just in case there was a flaw ?
If we want Winmx to grow and move forward then this is totally the correct option and move to make and i put my backing behind it 100%

[g33k-Worlok_B]

Open source it so noobs like KM can't shut you down.
End of debate.

[bu44er]

If we had an open Source Patch hell would break loose people would start modifying it to make the WPN Worse off.

[ñòóKýçrÕôK]

If we had an open Source Patch hell would break loose people would start modifying it to make the WPN Worse off.

Could also make it better.

[chuck]

 Someone correct me if im wrong here. But the source has been closed on the pitch we are useing made from km, right?You see where we are now with KM being mad at a few people,we now have our searches shown on a web page he runs,lord knows what ealse he may be up to or could do. Winmx is closed source and look at how many have worked hard and hooked up to the program with 3rd party programs,Anyone thinking the ri** or the MP** or the F*I dont allready know 100 times more than we know allready is a fool.
 The only thing open source will be sure of doing is makeing it easy for many users be able to move foward and keep improving a patch and maybe come up with a better way to keep winmx running for years to come. We all can see what closed source has done look at us to day we dont know what open can do.One thing is for sure if we keep going like we are now we will not be here another year. I say open.It can lead to may ways to patch winmx not just one and no one person will ever hold winmx hostage like others have in just this last year.