Our expanded plan was to build a corporate server that would participate in the Gnutella network on behalf of companies that wished to take part. We liked “LimeNode” a lot, but that seemed a little too repetitive. We didn’t get our LimeWire name until the fall of 2000. Bildson at LimeWire, courtesy Bildson’s Medium post I was busy dealing with the twilight days in the brief life of Lime Objects, where I stocked a pipeline of developer hires, one of whom was an intern who was experimenting with network Gnutella, which would prove to be the model of the future.

Greg Bildson, LimeWire COO, in “ LimeWire: Beginnings ”: LimeWire started at a row of desks right in front of me in the spring of 2000. But with a team of dedicated engineers, the software slowly grew into a file-sharing behemoth. LimeWire was by no means an overnight success. Within Lime Group was LimeWire, a proprietary team of engineers exploring the peer-to-peer space. As such, he launched Lime Group LLC in 2000. It was only a matter of time before the next platform emerged to meet that demand.Įnter Mark Gorton, a successful hedge-fund manager who saw an opportunity for commerce in peer-to-peer networking. Suddenly, it was possible - and extremely popular - to download media for free. There was, however, no putting the toothpaste back into the tube. In 2001, the internet’s premier file-sharing service Napster was shut down after just two years, leaving a giant vacuum in the ever-expanding peer-to-peer file-sharing space.

Limewire music app