Justin frankel wrote WinAMP, the worlds most popular MP3 player. He also wrote Gnutella, an intriguing decentralized file-sharing system that became the basis for Morpheus, BearShare, etc. He works for Nullsoft, which is owned by AOL. He recently wrote and semi-published a cool little instant-messaging app called W.A.S.T.E.. It was all open-source goodness, but apparently AOL didn’t like that, and removed the release from their servers. An encrypted, non-centralized instant messaging app competing with AIM? NEVER!

Well, it would seem that frankel has had enough. i can’t say i blame him. i’m sure there are plenty of people out there that would respect his wishes and allow him to write code at his will.