Pablo Soto (software developer)

Pablo Soto Bravo (born 1979) is a Spanish software developer. He was municipal councillor of Madrid from 2015 to 2019.

Pablo Soto in 2018.

In 2001 he developed the .MANOLITO protocol, Blubster and Piolet - two peer-to-peer file-sharing servants. In May 2006, Soto released Manolito,[1] a third clone application, and new versions of Blubster and Piolet.

He apparently left the MP2P Community in 2004; subsequently Blubster and Piolet slowly began to lose their user base. By the end of 2004, when discussions on P2Pforums.com[2] were focused on whether or not he had left the community for financial reasons, it was known that he has a rare form of muscular dystrophy,[3][4] that has forced him to move in wheelchair.[5]

Soto later put his energy into Omemo,[6][7] an open source peer-to-peer software for storage space sharing (distributed computing).

In June 2008, Warner Music, Universal Music, Emi, Sony and the Spanish association PROMUSICAE filed a lawsuit against his company MP2P Technologies, demanding 13 million euros for unfair competition.[8] He was acquitted on the charges of copyright violation in December 2011.[9]

After the 2015 local elections Soto became a member of the City Council of Madrid with Ahora Madrid. He announced plans to promote usage of free software for the municipal software platforms,[10] and as of January 2019 is head of open government for the city. He has launched Decide Madrid, an online platform whereby citizens can propose policy for the city: a proposal supported by a number of users equal to 1 percent of the adult population is put before voters in a referendum.[11] He renounced to his office as city councillor on 8 October 2019, after sexual misconduct allegations.[12]