news.com— Gnutella author Justin Frankel is considering quitting Nullsoft, the company he founded and sold to America Online, following repeated clashes with his corporate parent over software projects.

Frankel's comments come less than a week after AOL pulled a program he authored called Waste that enables small groups of people to create secure networks for sharing computer files.

Calling coding "a form of self-expression," Frankel said he could no longer put up with AOL's interference. "The company controls the most effective means of self-expression I have," he wrote in a note posted on his personal Web site. "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. I have nothing but respect for the company--I've just come to realize that it is time to do something different."   more...