Last summer, we wrote about WASTE, the nullsoft tool for secure communication and collaboration among small numbers of clients (10-50 nodes), which was posted under the GPL and almost as quickly pulled by AOL.
I was looking at WASTE as an example of the file sharing goes social pattern, but the sourceforge project has lain dormant for some time. Now, though, the chip-maker VIA seems to have stirred the pot by posting a tool which was a WASTE copy, not even a port, under the name PadLock, bringing this response yesterday from the WASTE developers.
I would also like to remind everyone that the last two releases are alpha, which is why only minor changes are visible. We have been experimenting with technologies to create a more feature rich program instead of releasing betas. We hope this will turn out well down the road.
The PadLock code has since been removed from VIA’s site, but it’s (temporarily?) revived activity and interest around WASTE, whose potential as an open-source platform for building social networks is large but also largely unrealized. Will be worth watching…
[Many-to-Many]