The difference is that we praise Tiku. Tiku was the guy that made ALL possible, while HopeSeekr keeps telling that he was the one. Without Tiku, we would have no real ed2k client for linux. It's a shame that Tiku is mostly unknown by the vast majority of the users, and we'll have to fix it.
Tiku ported ALL eMule 0.26 to linux, ALONE. COMPLETELY ALONE. Later, other people joined, xMule was forked from it (yes ted, forked from it. I was there), and the former lmule developers not on xMule dropped it. And Tiku dissapeared.
Tiku is our God our Mentat, our Sensei. Without Tiku, there would be nothing.
On the other side, HopeSeekr's work on xMule the first 3 months, when Madcat and I were there, made Macat leave xMule to develoop SD from scratch, and while I was away for personal problems, BigBob forked it to aMule. When I got back, after knowing the reason for both guys to leave and fork, I decided to join aMule, for I had already had too much of HopeSeekr too. And yes, closing source of xMule (which, btw, is completely impossible unless one write it from scratch), was one of the reasons.
The main problem here is the complete different view of developing free software that HopeSeekr has, compared to i.e, the aMule team or Madcat.
*) HopeSeekr has always stated that he wants to make profit from xMule. He is always asking for donations, he is always stating how much money he wants because he works on xMule for FREE and users 'owe' him the donations, etc. He wants to close xMule's source because he wants to make profit from it. One of the main reasons Madcat and I left, was because he wanted to do 'xMule plus' (which can be seen on sourceforge.net as registered project). "xMule plus" would be a closed source client which you could use only if you paid a certain amount of money every x time, and that would get you first on queue on any "xMule plus" AND xMule clients. Madcat and I of course refused to do so, and, in the end, that was the main reason of we leaving, despite the fact that HopeSeekr is a person we both do not like, for lots of reasons that shouldn't be stated here, as I'm trying to just give a '3rd party' view of all the xMule/aMule history.
*) On the other hand, aMule developers and Madcat (our guest star in some releases), and aMule testers, and everyone on the aMule comunity that I know of, have a very different view. We make aMule for the users, and we see it as a contribution to the world. We spend our spare time developing, browsing forums, helping people, translating, taking care of the #amule on freenode, and so on. But what makes us different is the we NEVER look for a profit on aMule. If it comes, it's welcome, for we never refuse the donations, of course. But you will never see us asking directly for a donation or giving the image that the users 'owe' something to us. It's US who owe the people the fact that they use aMule, and support us in any way. We're friends, and we do this for fun and, why not, for improving our skills and be proud of ourselves.
With such different views of the free software world, HopeSeekr could never work with us. And that's why he has his project (tho I want to point again that he didn't make it, for Tiku was the one making lmule and xMule was just lmule back then), and we have our project.
We just request to be able to have peace, tho he keeps attacking us in every way (eMule project posts, spamming at #wxwidgets on freenode, spamming on the very #amule on freenode, wxWidgets mailing lists, lphant project forums, even on a discussion about the Mozilla license I found direct attacks to the aMule project coming from him, and of course, and at least one or two times per week, on xmule's website and forums. And that's only what I can remember with the big hangover I have right now. There are much more).
But what I will NEVER let him say is that he is the creator of xMule or that aMule would never be without him. It was TIKU, for god's shake, who made all. ALL. HopeSeekr contributed to lmule project for about a month, then to xMule for 3 months, and NOTHING more is contributed by him on the aMule sourcecode. The fact he keeps developing xMule doesn't change the fact that aMule has been being developed for more than a year already. total time contributed by HopeSeekr: about 4 months. The total time contributed by almost all developers of aMule is much more than HopeSeekr's one. I have been contributing, since I joined lmule/xMule (I joined just in the middle of the fork), for 14 months (June 2003 + Sep 2003 - Oct 2004). Xaignar has been here developing more than half a year. DeltaHF has been here for a year. Phoenix, aprox. same time than Xaignar. Hetfield contributed to xMule and then to aMule, has been here as long as DeltaHF. BigBog after forking xMule to aMule has been here till the administrative probles on Feb 2004. Stefanero, lfroen, shakraw, falso, niet, ThePolish (efe), Jacobo, Unleashed, everyone active now and the former developers (don't forget Emilio Sandoz, lemonfan, etc etc - sorry if I can't remember everyone), had been here for more than 4 months.
There's another fact to consider: bedboi and pure_ascii, former lmule developers, has been on aMule, while not on xMule. Uberpenguin (HELLO UBER! HOW'S YOUR KROKODIL DOING?) had contributed the xMule logo and then the aMule logo (and he's not credited by HopeSeekr on the xMule website, btw, even when he uses it), lots of icons, and generally to keeping the good mood and the friendship we all aMule developers/contributors/etc share.
Hum. I'll finish my post here, too much to read already. But please, never think HopeSeekr is responsive for the *Mule on linux. I fell so bad about Tiku, the REAL one, everytime I read that, that I really feel like posting things like this one.
Enough said.
