Matthew Gertner may not look like an idealist, though he certainly sounds like one when discussing his new software that he claims will revolutionize how people use the World Wide Web.

The software, scheduled to be released in a few weeks, will help transform Internet technology from its current client-to-server model to a peer-to-peer model, according to Gertner, chief technology officer of AllPeers, the Prague– and Oxford, England–based company that created the new software.

The peer-to-peer model supports the concept that "information wants to be free," which runs counter to the traditional business model pioneered by Microsoft.

Gertner said the software will be available as a free download on the Mozilla Firefox browser — a no-charge browser that enjoys about 100 million users created as part of the Internet's Open Source movement.

Proponents of the peer-to-peer model tout it as economically more advantageous than client-to-server models, where every client must establish a connection with a server and the owner of the server pays the bandwidth charges.

Peer-to-peer models offer faster connections and users don't get blocked because they are sharing the same bandwidth.

"Economically, there is no single payer who must pay for the entire cost — it is shared among all the peers," said Brian Del Vecchio, software developer for Boston-based networking hardware company Datapower.com.

This is the model used to distribute games and large software like the new Open Office software.

Another product of AllPeers is designed to facilitate selling content — a model, Gertner says, that may soon phase out the advertisement-based business model of the Internet.

"We believe that in many cases the advertising model is kind of weak. It is a model that is quite open to fraud and it requires you to change the look of your Web site, which you might not want to do," he said.

Promoting sharing

Web sites are striving to have more of their applications running on the user's machine and not a on central server to speed up connections.

"At a certain point you want to have a real framework for doing this," Gertner said. AllPeers is working to create an extension to the Firefox Web browser that will enable its users to utilize more powerful computer applications by configuring programs so they can run inside the user's Web browser rather than inside a server.

Such a platform, Gertner stressed, will provide a framework that makes it possible to more easily develop applications that can run inside users' browsers and meet directly with each other.

The extension is also designed to help users organize, search and share their personal media files, and automatically converts personal computers into Web servers and Web browsers.

"It is like Google for your media files," Gertner said.

Based on its peer-to-peer model, AllPeers is also developing software, to be launched early next year, designed to make online content sales of articles, photos and videos easier. The software will also provide display and payment options that are user-friendly.

AllPeers, established in 2003, aims to attract five to 10 million users for its product by mid-2006. Gertner said company owners chose Prague as its launch location because of the nation's highly skilled and relatively inexpensive programmers.

"The Czech Republic is a good place to develop software," he said, but company officials were uncomfortable with the state of the country's intellectual property laws.

"We don't feel that the Czech legal system is mature enough to have intellectual property belonging to a Czech company," he said. So AllPeer's British arm took over the property rights issues and serves as a financial vehicle and investor base.

Gertner declined to forecast when AllPeers' business angels will make see investment returns.