AOL gutted Nullsoft in 2004, ending the run of Justin Frankel, who built Winamp, Shoutcast, Gnutella, and WASTE while on AOL’s payroll.
Key Takeaways
Frankel wrote Winamp in 1997 as a teenage dropout; AOL acquired Nullsoft for $100 million in 1999.
He published Gnutella in March 2000 without AOL permission, deliberately during the AOL-Time Warner merger; the protocol was decentralized and could not be shut down by targeting servers.
WASTE (2003) added encrypted, invite-only file sharing, making RIAA evidence gathering nearly impossible without physical raids.
Frankel also released a tool stripping ads from AOL Instant Messenger and quit in early 2004, citing code as personal expression the company controlled.
AOL repeatedly disowned his projects but never stopped him until the final mass layoff left Nullsoft at three employees.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters see the Gnutella release mid-acquisition as a defining act of technical defiance; the protocol’s decentralized design proved durable, with traffic still growing years after Napster’s shutdown.
The acquisition-then-kill pattern drew skepticism: consensus leans toward AOL wanting patents, naming rights, or customers rather than Nullsoft’s actual code or culture.
Notable Comments
@Fwirt: Frankel went on to found Cockos Software and remains lead developer on the REAPER DAW, contradicting the article’s “millionaire has-been” prediction.
