What is "xmule"

xMule — the X11 Mule — is a client for the eDonkey peer-to-peer file sharing network, originally intended to bring it to virtually all the major Unix platforms, with a particular emphasis on Linux. The project is no longer being developed, and users of xMule are encouraged to move to the BitTorrent network or use aMule in the official xMule website.

xMule is a fork of the LMule client, which itself was originally a Linux-only port of the eMule client. Due to severe differences between the developers, a new fork was created with the aMule project on August 18, 2003; the day that one of xMule's maintainers, Ted R. Smith, was sued by the Motion Picture Association of America.

xMule has since suffered from negative publicity through anonymous comments on software review sites such as GnomeFiles and Zeropaid, some of them even suggesting that the xMule project had stopped (while promoting aMule) when it was not the case at the time.
The official aMule page solely states that "relations between the two projects are sadly in a rather sorry state", whereas xMule's site contains an extensive manifesto on the issue, which goes as far as drawing comparisons to the different coding philosophies behind Internet Explorer and Mozilla.