Free server daemon for the original Napster peer 2 peer filesharing protocol

for Unix / Linux and Windows

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Last updated:
2005-04-03

Opennap NG is a free, non-commercial open source server software for Unix and Windows, serving the original Napster peer 2 peer filesharing protocol, to be used with clients such as Lopster / WinLop, XNap, WinMX, AudioGnome and others. This page provides information about the software and late developments. Feel free to become an Opennap NG server owner by yourself and serve the community.

This project is not affiliated to http://opennap-ng.org, which was created recently, based on an older Opennap NG source version with less features and bugfixes (compare changelogs) The background of the split can be found here .

Latest news:
2005-04-03: New and extensive FAQ is out
2005-03-26: Opennap NG 0.49.1 and Onngconf 0.3 are out.
See news for more details.

Brief history

Originally, Napster was a distributed file sharing service which allowed users to transfer files directly between their clients for free. A centralized server kept track of all available files and provided clients the ability to search the index of available files. In addition, instant messages (private chat) and group chat services similar to IRC were also provided.

OpenNap is a free Open Source effort to create a version of the proprietary Napster server. We want to express our thanx here to drscholl, who made an excellent job of programming.

OpenNap-NG is the new generation of Opennap, after drscholl had ceased to develop any further. Many new features and bugfixes have been included.

After a long time of mostlly stagnancy with only tiny improvements, Opennap NG 0.49 is the latest result of major development efforts since early 2005, to keep the spirit alive (or try to revive it a bit, rather).

Note that Opennap NG 0.49 is not a direct successor of previous versions 0.47 and 0.47.2! It's another branch from 0.46 instead, including lot more bug fixes and feature extensions than the 0.47.2 branch.

See the news or changelog sections to learn about latest developments and improvements.