Rogue AOL Subsidiary Leader to Resign

[Big-O Mark]

Rogue AOL Subsidiary Leader to Resign

Tuesday, June 3

By MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Technology Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A young programmer whose software startup, Nullsoft, was gobbled up by America Online — and then caused numerous headaches for its corporate parent — plans to resign after his latest piece of rebel code was pulled from the Internet.

Justin Frankel, 24, announced his intentions late Monday, less than a week after a file-sharing program called Waste was posted and then pulled from the Nullsoft Web site.

"The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have," he said in his Web log. "This is unacceptable to me as an individual, therefore I must leav (sic). I don't know when it will be, but I'm not going to last much longer."

Attempts to reach Frankel by telephone were not successful. An AOL spokeswoman declined to comment.

AOL paid $86 million for Nullsoft in 1999. At the time, the San Francisco company was best known for creating a popular music player called Winamp.

Despite the new corporate ownership, Nullsoft's team of programmers managed to maintain a freestyle hacker culture.

In March 2000, Nullsoft briefly posted a decentralized file-sharing program called Gnutella (news - web sites) before it was axed by AOL. But the genie had been set free, and other developers refined the code to create post-Napster (news - web sites) file-sharing programs.

Nullsoft's latest creation was a file-sharing program that allowed users to set up secure networks of no more than 50 people.

Within hours of its posting, Waste was deleted. In its place was a notice that said the program had been posted without Nullsoft's permission.

"If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the software, you acquired no lawful rights to the software and must destroy any and all copies of the software, including by deleting it from your computer," the statement said. "Any license that you may believe you acquired with the software is void, revoked and terminated."

Frankel, who is called "Our Benevolent Dictator" on the Nullsoft site, founded the company in 1998 after dropping out of the University of Utah.

[insomica]

That sucks. Why did AOL buy them anyways?

[Big-O Mark]

Back in the day AOL was buying everything ... ICQ, Netscape, Nullsoft ... they had a ton of money and the internet was making booming.

[fuuucckkers]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! That means Nullsoft (Winamp) is going down the shitter! Which means no more 2.9x updates! Which also means no more 3.x updates (but I don't like that version anyway)

[Anthony]

I find it funny AOL thinks they can change something after it has been released under the GPL... I find it even more funny they think everyone will do what they say even though they are lying through their teeth with the statement about having "no legal rights".