The Complete History Of WinMX - Part 8



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The "patch war" as it became known centered around the competing offerings from the two patch and cache operating groups, in the begining it was necessary to get users reconnected to the network but before a week had passed a new kind of patch was created that came in the form of a DLL winsock replacement that was placed into the same folder as the WinMX application and would intercept any messages heading for WinMX.com and redirect them to a new location, as mentioned already, this method allowed for a move away from using direct IP addresses that had to be hard coded into the Host file, this then was a first improvement on the basic connection fix, an even more powerful update was the addition of a blocklist facility and this made it possible to block the many network fake file flooders that had been annoying users of the network from around late 2004. This new enhancement was to put it mildly seen as a revolution in most technical circles and the fighting amongst the host file users and the dll users became somewhat intense as it was felt that the host file users where allowing deliberate flooding of the network, it was perhaps more likley that the technical capability to replicate the dll did not exist in the Pie Team camp and with no src code for the dll patch being available to inspect, mistrust and suspicion once again took the place of common sense and common ground.

This situation continued virtually unchanged with sometimes a "virtual" ceasefire of harsh words and more emphasis placed on user support and the merits of the individual offerings, this suited winmxworld as they where confident of their efforts, however the situation was less than ideal in terms of uniting the community against the real attackers of the network whom might well have been laughing all the way to the bank during this stage in the communities history.

A further heart stopping moment came in late 2007 when King Macro made it clear he no longer wished to remain part of the architectural support group that consisted of Peer cache operators and DNS Domain Name holders, in the case of winmxworlds efforts much of this was provided by King Macro himself.
Soon doubts began to emerge regarding KM's real reasoning behind his suprise declaration, in public he spoke of being "fed up" and harassed by the many hundreds of patch feature requests he was receiving, making it a pain to help the network's users instead of a joy, but it was soon noticed that a more likely cause of his distress was the staggering costs he had incurred in maintaining several domains and servers because it was initially thought in 2005 that a further set of anti p2p attacks might arise to shutter the network so redundant capacity had been purchased and sat unused in expectation.

A timeframe was arranged to allow for the remaining winmxworld operators to fill the gap using community resources but it was felt by most to be the end of an era and many where sad to see him depart.
Following on from King Macros departure WinMXWorld where lucky to receive the offer of help from a professional web master known in the community as "MicroMecca", his resources and the efforts of Nylly (a winmxworld operator) made a great difference during the hectic phase of changing web servers. Once again the community was pulling together to heal itself.    

For a short period there was some animosity between the winmxworld operators and King Macro caused by the necessity to replace the patch and cache software all in a short space of time as KM had decided to not allow his software to be utilised any further, this was of course something that was critical to both the users and the networks continued survival and thus a further rebuilding effort was set into motion. For a short period of time a modified KM Cache and Patch was used to allow users to connect to the network on a set of new DNS addresses purchased for this purpose.
The longer term plan set in motion involved a programmer by the name of "Eagle" known for his chat server "Eserv", he was asked by GhostShip to head up this important role as he was a respected programmer known and trusted by both sides in the patch wars and it was felt that at some time in the future it would be possible to share any code produced by him to both sides and this would end the stalemate situation that existed, with King macro stepping aside the way was now looking clear to some kind of reconcilliation of effort.

Eagle was quickly able to deliver a working peer cache and this was followed up approximately a month later with a brand new DLL file that we now all know as the Community Patch, following on from many months of drawn out discussion involving Silicon Toad and Tig on behalf of winmxworld along with Nobby from vladd44.com and importantly Ome Leo and other Pie Team members an agreement was reached with the bulk of the Pie Team to utilise the Community patch and gain access to the src code it was constructed from along with the same for the vital peer caches, this alone involved much trust building and a setting aside of all old greviences.

One holdout whom refused to take part in any reconcilliation talks was perhaps the initial instigator of the community rift, Sabre911.
This statement is made in hindsight following on from conversations with many users in the community whom where close to the initial recovery effort and witnessed some important conversations. Sabre is stated to have refused to work with King Macro from day one of the network closure and is alleged to have forced vladd to choose one developer over the other, if this is the case it would seem only fitting to note that the community patch is the defacto solution utilised by nearly all the networks users. Openness, trust and democracy are treasured by the userbase it seems.


We have reached a stable milestone in the community and yet there is much more to read, look back here to read further adventures in WinMX land and also please feel free to add your historical input by posting it on wmw and we will slot it in to the timeline after a small bit of editing if necessary -  cheers folks !!





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