WireShare (formerly known as LimeWire Pirate Edition) is a revival of the
LimeWire
LimeWire was a free peer-to-peer file sharing client for Windows, MacOS, Linux and Solaris. Created by Mark Gorton in 2000, it was most prominently a tool used for the download and distribution of pirated materials, particularly pirated mus ...
software (a
gnutella
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network protocol. Founded in 2000, it was the first decentralized peer-to-peer network of its kind, leading to other, later networks adopting the model.
In June 2005, Gnutella's population was 1.81 million compute ...
p2p-network client).
The original LimeWire Pirate Edition was adapted from LimeWire Basic edition to provide similar features to LimeWire Pro, with no
adware
Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...
, advertising, or
backdoor control.
The
Ask toolbar
Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves) is a question answering–focused e-business founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.
The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky, from his own design. Wart ...
integration was removed, along with dependencies on LimeWire servers and remote settings.
The software supports Windows, Linux and Mac, and its source code is available on
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...
.
History
After LimeWire was shut down by the
RIAA
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/ ...
, a hacker with the alias of "Meta Pirate" created LimeWire Pirate Edition. Lime Wire
LLC
A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of ...
, has stated that the company were "not behind these efforts. LimeWire does not authorize them. LimeWire is complying with the Court’s October 26, 2010 injunction."
The LimeWire team acted to shut down the Pirate Edition website. A court order was issued to close down the website. Meta Pirate did not contest the order.
After it was shut down, the original LimeWire open source project was reforked into WireShare with the goal of preserving the Gnutella network and maintaining a sincere continuation of the original effort; the software still continues today.
See also
*
FrostWire
FrostWire is a free and open-source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including supp ...
, a former gnutella client, and also a LimeWire fork, that was created in 2004, also with the purpose of removing adware and backdoors.
References
External links
* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101112033930/http://metapirate.webs.com/ , date=12 November 2010 , title=LimeWire Pirate Edition website
LimeWire Pirate Edition source code at GitHub
Gnutella clients
Free BitTorrent clients
Free file sharing software
Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
Internet services shut down by a legal challenge