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Shareaza is a peer-to-peer file sharing client which supports the Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey Network, BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP network protocols and handles magnet links[1], ed2k links, Piolet links, and the now deprecated Gnutella links.[2] It is available in 30 languages. [3]
Shareaza was developed by Michael Stokes until June 1, 2004, and is now maintained by a group of volunteers. On 1 June 2004, Shareaza 2.0 was released, along with the source code, under the GNU General Public License (GPL), making it free software. The latest version, released on October 1, 2008, is 2.4.0.0.
History
In mid 2002, Stokes released the first version of a Gnutella client he had written and dubbed "Shareaza". It was from the beginning a client with the aim of having features other Gnutella clients did not have.citation needed Over the next two years Stokes coded in support for the eDonkey 2000 network, BitTorrent and a rewritten Gnutella-based protocol which he named Gnutella2.
Stokes released the Shareaza source code under version2 of the GNU General Public License on June 1, 2004 (which coincided with the release of Shareaza version 2.0).
Since the beginning, Shareaza was advertised as "completely free. No ads, no spyware, no guilting you to upgrade to a commercial version", stating that the developers "[couldn't] stand that kind of crap."[4] It has remained as such in each subsequent release.
The original version of the client featured swarming, metadata, library management, automatic file hashing, and numerous other features, which all remain in the client to this day and are extended and improved at each release.[4]
Domain transfer
On 19 December 2007, the project's domain name, shareaza.com, was redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of a client known as ShareazaV4.[5] As a result, the original project was forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.
Since 1 January 2008, the new domain takes advantage of the automatic update feature built into versions prior to 2.3.1 of the original Shareaza to suggest to users that ShareazaV4 is an update to Shareaza. This vulnerability was fixed in Shareaza 2.3.1.0[6], released on January 3rd[7]. It is the last stable version of Shareaza that will support Windows 9x.[8]
Yahoo, which uses SiteAdvisor to filter their search results[9], no longer lists domain shareaza.com due to it being listed by SiteAdvisor as a security risk.[10] Other website rating services, such as WOT (Web of Trust), also rate Shareaza.com as dangerous.[11]
Attempted trademark takeover
On January 10, 2008, the new owners of Shareaza.com, Discordia Ltd (iMesh Inc.[12]), filed for trademark registration of the Shareaza name, claiming that the first-ever use of this name was on December 17, 2007.[13] The Shareaza Development Team has since obtained legal representation and a legal defense fund has been set up in order to help fight for the cause.[14][15]
Future
The latest release of Shareaza is v2.4.0.0, released on October 01, 2008, with many bug fixes and major changes to provide better stability of the client. It is also the first stable release to provide IRC support.[16]
In order to be prepared in case of the loss of the Shareaza trademark issue, the Shareaza community currently supports the development of a second application (codename 'Panthera'), written from scratch and currently in the alpha development stage. This new client will have cross-platform support, which had been planned for a long time for Shareaza, but couldn't be implemented due to Shareaza's dependency on the Microsoft Foundation Classes; Panthera uses the Qt framework instead. The new application will provide all the features that Shareaza has now, such as library management and support for 4 different P2P networks, and new and rebuilt features. Panthera will be much more modular, using a completely redesigned plugin system. The currently outdated BitTorrent implementation of Shareaza will be replaced by the LibTorrent libraries.[17]
Features
Multi-network
Shareaza is able to connect to Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey and BitTorrent. Shareaza hashes its files for all networks, and then distributes those hash values on G2. This allows Shareaza to download one file from several networks at once.[18] When another Shareaza client, connected to G2, finds such a file, it is given the hash values for all networks and can search on the other networks with their respective hash values, which increases the number of sources and therefore also increases the download speed of the respective file. Shareaza also uses its G2 network to find more sources for torrents.
Security filter
The Shareaza client has some basic content filters including a forced child pornography filter, and some optional filters such as a filter for files protected with Digital rights management (DRM). Shareaza's security filters can also be extended with user-defined keywords and/or IP addresses. These filters increase the chances of getting the files the user wants and decrease the chance of getting a malicious or fake file. The file format used for the filters is an extendable XML schema. The filters are editable inside Shareaza, or with any external text editor, and can be exported from the application to be shared with others.
The Shareaza Security Centre maintains a list—the X-Ray Security Filter—which helps to protect from spamming clients which may distribute spyware or viruses. Alternative filters are maintained by the community.citation needed
Beta versions of Shareaza allow for the use of regular expressions [19] and filtering by hash.
Plugins
Shareaza running in windowed mode with several activated skins. On the picture can be seen a search window, a bandwidth graph, the upload controll window (uper-right corner) and the connection window (center), showing 4 Gnutella1, 3 Gnutella2 and an ed2k server connection.
Shareaza implements a framework for additional plugins. The Shareaza installer ships several plugins. Most of them are used to read and strip off built in metadata from the files being hashed and convert it to an external XML based format, or to decode multimedia files for making a preview for other G2 clients. Some others serve the need of a media player inside Shareaza, and enhancements of that media player. Third party plugins can also be used, for example, Sharemonkey, which will add a link inside Shareaza when downloading or searching copyrighted material from where it can be legally downloaded.
Skins
The client can have almost all parts of the GUI skinned. This includes bars, icons, as well as backgounds and buttons. In that way, Shareaza can be completely changed with colors, images, new buttons, etc. A basic list of skins is contained in the Shareaza installer package. Other skins can be downloaded in the community forums or found via a search for .sks (Shareaza skin files) in the Gnutella2 network. The skins are zip archives, renamed with the extension .sks, containing icons and images, as well as an XML file which binds the images and colors with the GUI.[20]
This feature is also used for localization. The language files are XML files, like the normal skins, but not zipped. The XML file contains the translations for a certain part of the program. This enables languages to be easily changed, updated and tested without compiling an entire binary.[21]
Modes
Shareaza contains 3 user modes. The first one is for normal users. This mode is the default mode and provides a clean, trimmed GUI. Users will not be able to heavily change the settings in this mode, but will be able to make use of the most essential functions, like searching and downloading. The second mode is for power users. It provides more access to network and advanced settings, but can also break your connection to the networks. The third mode is the windowed mode. In this mode, users can see different tabs at the same moment, providing a lot of control about the things happening. This mode also makes it possible to persomalize the look of the client to perfectly fit the needs of the respective user.
Forks
Several forks of Shareaza exist.
ShareazaPlus (or Shareaza with CB core) is a mod made by an ex-developer called CyberBob. He took over the already existing ShareazaPlus mod from SourceForge.net.
ShareazaLite is a modified version of Shareaza associated with the Flox P2P project.[22] It only contains the G2 network, and discards the other networks. This is to test the Flox P2P technique on it. This mod is made by one of the current admins of Shareaza, Rolandas.[23]
See also
References
External links
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