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"History's page will thus be carved in
stone.
And we are here, and we are on our own." -quote from a song
by J. Barlow
First came the beautiful bands who play live
music that people want to hear again and again. Then came the
early tapers who taped these live shows on analog tape with rudimentary
microphone setups. Then came DAT and digital recording, then with
the arrival of the Internet the digital music sharing experience
began to explode. First came trickles of music from places like
eyes.sugarmegs.org and others who happily shared the low bandwidth
friendly format of MP3 (a lossy format) and Real Audio (a streaming
format). Etree.org followed soon behind with a network of FTP
servers and a community interface to connect traders to seeders
and traders to other traders. They also adopted a format called
SHN (a lossless format).
But as all music sharing geeks know, music
downloading/sharing, no matter the format, is a high bandwidth
activity and some ISP's frown on people clogging up their pipes.
So eventually the free bandwidth started to dry up at SugarMegs,
and it was at this time that SugarMeg's Peter Hedeman and PCP
Networks CEO Jamie Addessi started experimenting with with an
Client Server thingy called PCP Client. PCP stands for Packet
Chain Protocol and allows for users to piggy back of one-another
and was developed to conserve the small amount of bandwidth that
was then available for SugarMegs. While effective, the PCP Client
was "some what" clunky and to say the least, "hard-to-use".
It was not yet ready for the public.
A few months later Jamie and Peter released
the first version of Furthur to the SugarMegs mailing list and
to the masses. This first version looked very similar to what
we see today, except not as pretty. Peter, MikeW and others in
the sugarmegs community threw up shows in short order in order
to test how well the new software would work. Around the same
time Nick Relation(aka; dika) started experimenting with Furthur
in conjunction with Peter and Jamie. The Early stages of development
and testing flew during this period while Jamie worked hard to
iron out the initial wrinkles. It was shortly after this "alpha-testing
phase" that Peter asked cofounder of etree.org, Mike Wren
to sign on, help promote and develop the Furthur Network and oversee
development direction. Enlisting Mike mid to late 2001 provided
the fuel and by September 2001 Jamie had the first "beta"
version of FurthurNet ready for public testing. Beautiful Things
were just on the horizon now.
Stepping up to the plate, Mike and Nick formed
the now famous "Furthur Chat room" which is now integrated
and an important aspect of the FurthurNet Software. Nick also
brought the now famous "truxel" online to help keep
everyone in line. :) As Mike facilitated development by quickly
bringing on and recruiting more developers to help work on FurthurNet,
development really moved along and Jamie cranked out code like
there was no tomorrow. There was almost a new version of Furthur
every few days and the chat room filled to almost 1000 just before
the Christmas 2001 holiday season because of a mention on slash.dot.
The Furthur Network was growing and it was working. In early 2001,
Chris Bick joined the project as development leader, since Jamie
had other commitments and couldn't devote as much time that was
needed to continue all-out development of FurthurNet. Chris kept
up the pace on Furthur just as Jamie did, and releases flew out
the window like mad. All the while the Furthur Network was getting
better.
To help build the Community aspect of the
Furthur Network and to give users a voice to help each other and
voice their concerns, Mike brought the FurthurNet
forums online. This move has become a valuable resource for
the FurthurNet community and to this day is well-used. It was
a few months after this, that development slowed to a crawl as
the main developers and the deep-in-the-trench Java coders became
involved in different, paying, "real" jobs. A few months
after this lull in development, Mike decided, that it was "his
time" to head out of door and to end his involvement with
the Furthur Network. Chris also had been involved in other projects
and decided, he also, had to take a side seat and be more of a
consultant to the project, than lead developer. With the departure
of Jamie, Chris and Mike from the Project, Peter took over as
project leader and a quest for new developers/coders was begun.
Ivan and David, both Java Developers, joined soon after,
and Paonia, moved forward to initiate and maintain the backend
along with Nick. The 2 new java developers were an asset to the
project, moving production and bugfixes along a bit. The Code
was also commented a bit by David. May 2003, FurthurNet 1.7.3
and their hard work is released. The Network stabilized and the
fruits of everyones hard work was realized once again. The Holidays
came and then work related projects were necessary for these guys
to continue living life. Current obligation keep them busy. Over
the New Years the project slowed, with the Network maintaining
2800 users average and the future of FurthurNet is continually
assessed. Bandwidth and Developers are sought.
Early 2004, Peter steps down, asking the group if
Mark Goldey was up to the project-leader task. No Objections from
the development team. Mark steps up to bat. By March 2004, the
FurthurNet project maintains an average of approx 2400 hosts.
Java development continues secretly. Furthur moves forward, non-the-less,
and the deadicated still remain.
Fast forward to today. Development continues
on FurthurNet, (& developers
are always needed)
..... the sharing Experiment continues ....
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