Monday January 06, 2003
It's a whole new ball game in the land of Blubster.
Every network has its share of challenges, whether confronted by the RIAA, or torn apart by internal struggles such as Gnutella. In either case, when a network's true strength is tested, its longevity is determined by whether it can withstand the relentless pressure.
Largely unnoticed by the public, Optisoft, the owner of Blubster, has been subject to an array of circumstances that has forced major changes in this Spanish firm.
Optisoft's most notable change is the departure of its lead programmer, Pablo Soto. Looking to start fresh, Pablo has regrouped and licensed his technology to a new project called "Piolet" (pronounced Pee-oh-lay.)
In addition, Blubster development under Optisoft has, for all practical purposes, ceased. If you're looking for the next beta release, it may never exist. Future development of the now Piolet network will continue under Pablo's new venture. If Optisoft does want to deploy an upgraded version of Blubster, it would have to purchase the licensing rights from Piolet (similar to how Grokster purchases FastTrack technology from Sharman.) However, the fate of Blubster/Optisoft remains to be seen, as it is questioned whether they can now survive. Pablo commented on the issue, "I'm really not sure what will happen to Blubster, but Piolet is here to stay."
At first glance, Piolet simply looks like a Blubster clone with different colors plastered on. Nothing can be further from the truth. Piolet 1.03 is what the official Blubster 2.0 was supposed to be. With this release, virtually every problem associated with the old Blubster betas have been eliminated. The Windows XP compatibility issue has been resolved, and you'll find this version now runs smoothly on all Windows operating systems. Months of private beta testing with members of the P2PChat.org IRC network has proved invaluable, as a wide resource of knowledgeable P2P users were able to work out the remaining kinks.
One of the more interesting additions is the weblinks feature (similar to eDonkey/Overnet.) Now, like eDonkey, individuals can create weblinks for Piolet (could a Sharereactor for Piolet now be in the works?)
"This client is superior in every way," says Pablo, "...the network and the core protocol daemon is much better...basically, less resources with more results."
Has the Blubster network hit a few bumps in the road? Sure, but development has been surging ahead at a furious rate. Although this is a time of transition, the Blubster network, now the Piolet network, is emerging in an advantageous situation. With a new version and new look, Piolet is more than capable of taking over where Blubster left off and leading this network to new heights in the P2P world.
http://www.piolet.com/