Developer of peer-to-peer file sharing software GNUTELLA found shot dead.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020709/ap_on_hi_te/kan_profile_2 ^

[bonesmccoy]

Tech Pioneer's Death Called Suicide
Tue Jul 9, 7:48 PM ET

By RON HARRIS, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A pioneer of the technology that took Internet file-sharing far beyond Napster ( news - web sites), Gene Kan became something of an unofficial spokesman for one of the hottest software developments to survive the Internet boom.

Photos AP Photo

On Tuesday, the 25-year-old Kan was mourned by colleagues after being found dead of what authorities said was an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Sue Turner of the San Mateo County medical examiner's office said Kan's body was found July 2 at his home in Belmont, about 20 miles south of San Francisco. Turner said that the death would likely be ruled a suicide.

A peer-to-peer network is one where each computer can share files and often peripheral devices with other computers. There is no central server that can interrupt communications between all of the peer computers on the network.

The Gnutella ( news - web sites) protocol — a set of computer instructions for a peered network — was first posted on the Internet by Nullsoft, a software company owned by AOL Time Warner. Kan got his hands on a downloaded version of Gnutella and began, along with other developers, to fashion it into a user-friendly interface with various improvements on the performance of the software.

Kan quickly became the outspoken, lead proponent for the further development of Gnutella-based applications.

Gnutella came along as Shawn Fanning's Napster program became mired in lawsuits by the recording industry. Kan and a small clutch of developers honed the Gnutella protocol so that programmers around the world could make their own home-brewed computer applications — each speaking the same language and capable of pointing users to shared music, video and software files.

The main difference between the Gnutella network and other file-sharing programs was a crucial one. Gnutella has no company to sue or central servers to shut down with a court injunction.

"There is no head to the Gnutella dragon," Kan told The Associated Press in 2000. After that interview, Kan quickly became the ad hoc spokesman for Gnutella's development during file-swapping debates surrounding Napster.

Kan acknowledged that some unauthorized files were being traded via the Gnutella network.

"How users make use of it, I hate to say it's not our problem, but it really isn't," Kan said.

The simple Gnutella protocol spawned a legion of file-sharing programs that remain popular today. The programs LimeWire, BearShare and Phex all make use of the Gnutella engine.

"Gene was really good at communicating the technical merits of the peer-to-peer approach," said author and entrepreneur Cory Doctorow, who took part in many panel discussions with Kan.

Doctorow said Kan's personality recently began to take on a tone of depression and described his colleague as "dour."

In June 2000, Kan co-founded Burlingame-based InfraSearch Inc., a peer-to-peer search engine technology company.

A statement released Monday by his employer, Sun Microsystems Inc., said Kan died as the result of an accident and that no further details of his death were being released at the request of his family.

Sun spokeswoman Carrie Motamedi said Kan had been working on advanced computing projects for Sun.

"Clearly everyone feels that we've lost a valued employee and trusted friend and colleague that we'll miss greatly," Motamedi said.

[GingisK]

Just goes to shot that money and success does not necessarily translate into happiness.

Oh, yes, I wish I could be Richard Corey!

[Freebird Forever]

Oh yes eddie, THUGS!! There is a book out about Death Row Records( the name escapes me at this moment, which records the doings of Suge Knight, let's just say this guy is no Col. Tom Parker or Brian Epstein, give you a hint, there were times when Knight and his friends in the Bloods, would get some poor soul, and have him beaten up, right in the middle of the offices of Death Row Records. Very entertaining and scary reading.

This is a very old and long on-going thing, as well. When the lead members, the actual songwriters that were part of the group "Chic" found out that the Sugar Hill Gang had stolen the instrumentals from "Good Times" to use for their "Rappers Delight" (back in 1979), they naturally asked them to stop stealing their work. The Sugar Hill Gangs response was to send armed thungs out and threaten the poor guys. Fortunately, Chic's lawyer had Mafia connections, and enough pressure was brought to bear on the Sugar Hill Gang; a compromise was reached, and the two songwriters got half a mill in cash on the QT.....

I seem to recall that Led Zepplins manager had quite a reputation for thuggery as well.

[monkeyshine]

I'm not sure he even made any money. Maybe he was cleaning his gun with a chamber in the round.

[monkeyshine]

Music mafia?

Michael Jackson did say that Tony Matolla is "mean, racist and very devilish."

[beckett]

A lifetime, even a short lifetime, buried in code can cause severe alienation. Despite the appeal of tin foil theories, I tend to think that a syndrome not very uncommon in godless geekdom --- i.e., existential-crisis/nerd-misanthropy --- best explains this tragedy.

[eno_]

Well, since Jack Vallenti probably was invovled in the JFK assasination, this would be small-time by comparison

[daviddennis]

I strongly suspect you hit the nail on the head - it would have been very easy for him to go seriously bust if he didn't sell a good percentage of his stock straight away.

These pierced bubble years are no good for any tech companies, I fear :-(.

D

[fella]

Was his gun made up of untraceable parts from a number of other guns?

[anymouse]

Must have been a hit by that Hollywood "Gay Mafia" that Ovitz was talking about ;)