The Complete History Of WinMX - Part 2

2001 was a time of flux for the creators of WinMX, they had made some good ground in achieving a strong presence on the OpenNap server networks that had sprung up flushed with the success of Napster, but it had yet to break away from the crowd, thankfully the users didnt have to wait too long to see progress.
First out of the blocks was the already mentioned WinMX 2.0, this was very closely followed a week later by the release of Version 2.1, this version fixed some of the bugs from the previous weeks release.

WinMX 2.1 release page from the internet archive

Find WinMX 2.1 in WinmxWorld Archive

There followed a short lull in activity for around 7 weeks with little occurring except for one important event on our calendar, the peercaches in usage at that time became gradually overloaded and on the 4th of May had to be restarted. Four days later on the 8th of May version 2.50 was released

However it seems there was once again an over-looked bug and so on the same day a second release was undertaken (2.51).  

WinMX 2.51 release page from the internet archive

Find WinMX 2.51 in WinmxWorld Archive

This was followed shortly on the 17/05/01 by version 2.60 and with this release and minimal fanfare one of the most popular WinMX versions ever was delivered to the eager public.

WinMX 2.60 release page from the internet archive

Find WinMX 2.60 in WinmxWorld Archive

The WinMX 2.60 version proved extremely popular amongst OpenNap users especially the Japanese users some of whom still only use this particular version to this day, as well as meeting the majority of the expectations of its users it was also a time of consolidation and stability at Frontcode and no further "Polished" releases where seen during the rest of the year, however behind the scenes much activity was going on to address a pressing concern that was evident to many in the P2P community, how to move away from the perceived and very real threat of legal action against the critical OpenNap server operators, while many users debated this matter in the online forums and news groups devoted to OpenNap the "elves" at Frontcode where creating the start of something very special and to meet this aim there was one short lived beta test series that was numbered 2.9 but it seems no copies of this series where released to the public so lets fast forward to the public start of the WinMX decentralisation era.