The earliest version of bnetd was really just the result of a compsci student's curiosity on how battle.net worked. It's only real use was at LAN parties if you wanted extra Battle.net like features. Otherwise the game supported LAN play.
At the time, the copy protections on Blizzard's games were nearly non-existent and as I recall the official Battle.net didn't itself do much to stop cheaters either.
Fun fact: #Blizzard went on my permanent #boycott list after the #bNetd fiasco.
Haven't touched anything by them since.
Haven't missed a damn thing.
Hell, StarCraft even officially supported "spawn" installs intended for use at LAN parties. The idea was that as long as the host had a legal copy, they supported "spawn" installs so your buddies could play with you.
Around the time Warcraft 3 was coming out, Blizzard was building stronger anti-piracy checks into Battle.net.
The maintainers of bnetd at the time claimed they were open to working with Blizzard to make sure their implementation also had such checks.
