Peercast Source Available

jilles writes "Peercast, a p2p streaming program, has had some attention on slashdot recently. Now the source code has been released under GPL. Please find the announcement + source code here."

Re:Fastrack

[XTerm89D]

giFT [sourceforge.net] anyone ?

giFT has proven to be an extremely reliable program, even though it's CVS only.
Please note that you have to checkout a new version every 3 days orso to be able to connect.

The PeerCast FAQ

[Max Romantschuk]

The PeerCast FAQ [peercastwiki.com] is a good introduction to PeerCast.

Re:Fastrack

[Zorikin]

OpenFT? [sourceforge.net]

There's already an implementation of the FastTrack protocol, the problem is that the kazaa-and-friends network doesn't allow clients which aren't blessed by the authentication server to connect.

Gnutella clients have been and still are accumulating the useful features of FastTrack.

Re:how useful is Peercast?

[MontyP]

If you are a user on a dialup modem, you will be able to broadcast music to the entire network. The stream is distributed to many other streaming servers and hence a small amount of bandwidth is required on your end to reach a large number of users. This would be fantastic for "Dialup DJ's" and others who don't have the bandwidth but want to stream out audio shows. GPL should allow the project to reach goals faster and possibly spawn other projects/ (streaming video, voip plug-ins)

Re:...agree to the following condition...

[PeerCast]

Yeah sure... how many crackers will adhere to this condition?

None. Its there to let well meaning hackers know what they should/should not do after they`ve downloaded the source.

Re:GPL + Commercial

[Gldm]

In my opinion, they must either have:

1) an agreement with the patch author to redistribute his/her code in the commercial version, which may involve some kind of compensation

or

2) a licensing clause detailing what parts of the commercial software are under different licenses as they've been submitted by other authors, and prompt the user to agree with those other licenses or remove the "patch" functionality

or

3) seperate installations of their base code and the modified "patch" code with seperate license agreements and credits for them

At least that's how I plan to do it. I want to do something similar to this with my own software but I really could use some experienced advice on it.

I think number 3 is not that unreasonable an option. The company could continue selling their "commercial" package as is, and then add a "bonus CD" full of GPL enhancements, updates, etc that the user may install seperately. As long as they're not absorbed into the product, and the user knowingly agrees to the different license terms for each, it should be fine.

Re:Fastrack

[Per Wigren]

If everyone on fastrack switched over to gnutella all would be fine.

No, that would be HORRIBLE! Gnutella doesn't scale that much.

Re:Ok, but how many actually use it?

[kpansky]

Did you actually visit the homepage? Or even read the article? This is filesharing applied to a legal and very interesting situation.

This uses the gnutella protocol to repeat internet radio broadcasts between listeners. If you listen to a radio station, you have the option of rebroadcasting what your listening to to another person. This distributes the load of hosting a radio station and allows you to help out small (in particular personal) broadcasters.

I would love to use this, but I think that my University is filtering all evil copyright-infringing gnutella traffic to /dev/null... so I cant even use it for now.

Re:History repeating.

[updog]

It's not a "filesharing" client/server... it's a "streaming" client/server. There's a big difference here.
With Gnutella, you're sharing files. With this software, you're sharing streams.
The cool thing about this is that a radio station (or any user for that matter) with limited bandwidth can now stream their program to an unlimited number of listeners.
I hope my ,y favorite club starts using this, so I don't have to worry about their limit to the number of simultaneous listeners they support!

Re:Download conditions?

[PeerCast]

As someone else mentioned [slashdot.org], the GPL doesn`t give anyone rights to modify our tree, if you don`t like the idea of your code being in the main branch, then fork.

f) is common sense, if you submit a patch that gets accepted then you can`t really expect us to be able to roll back N versions if you suddenly decide you don`t want it in there anymore.

BTW peercast.org isn`t a business, we don`t have any legal staff, we`ve got a few programmers working in their spare time.

Re:Ok, but how many actually use it?

[BrookHarty]

Actually, it is p2p, if you are the DJ, you only need 1 (perfect world) stream out. Then another person connects and shares your stream out while listening. Thus spreading your music out, increasing with each additional user. If you have the bandwidth, you can stream multiple channels of the same content increasing the user availability of it. (64k in, 128K out, you now doubled the stream)

BTW, that woxy.com radio on peercast is rather good, listened to it the other day on a 64k ogg stream, awesome.

Re:Download conditions?

[AndrewRUK]

It isn't requiring you to agree to the GPL in order to use the software, it's only if you want a copy of the source. And as the only thing that entitles you to a copy of the source is the GPL, I see no reason why they cannot require your acceptance of it before giving you access to the source.

Re:how useful is Peercast?

[jilles]

The protocol is the same as is used by shoutcast. All that peercast does is relay the stream. Typically clients such as winamp do some buffering.

Essentially, when streaming, you tell shoutcast/oddcast or whatever encoder you are using to stream the music to your peercast client rather than a regular shoutcast server. Peercast then inserts some meta information into the peercast network so that other clients can find your stream. Other peercast clients can connect to your client to receive the stream. Peercast treats received streams exactly the same as streams that come from oddcast so anyone listening to your stream can also relay it further on. Theoretically, this allows a modem user to stream to a nearly endless amount of users by uploading just 1 stream. In practice it is better to allow for two or three streams so you have somewhat better reliability. Of course you need bandwidth in order to be able to relay. Low bandwidth ogg streams propagate better through the network than 128kbit mp3 streams. Ogg streams of around 45 kbit seem to be popular among peercast users.

Recently the ability to relay regular shoutcast streams was added so if you have a regular shoutcast server, you may save some bandwidth by encouraging your users to connect using peercast rather than directly to your server. Alternatively you can set up your own peercast node next to your regular server.

Re:Download conditions?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

" (c) is just redundant, and uneccessary. Read up on what makes the GPL tick. If they don't agree with the GPL, then they can't use the code in any way, read item 6 I believe from the GPL. The GPL isn't a contract, its a copyright agreement."

Not true. Using the software isn't covered by the GPL:

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.

The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.