Azureus Inc. Moves Toward Commercialization

SamBob writes "Future releases of the most popular BitTorrent client, Azureus, will come bundled with a 'platform' for media companies to promote their product to Azureus' multi-million users, reports Slyck.com. Azureus Inc., who are the newly formed company behind the Azureus software, plan to generate a profit from the platform in the future, but in the short-term are hoping to help independent film companies find their audience."

Comments

Above the radar

[nurb432]

In the current anti p2p world, i dont think thats such a good idea. Now they will be a direct target.

Re:Above the radar

[madcow_bg]

You are right. RIAA hates p2p. But ... you know that the customer is always right, ana there is a point in helping others. There are many quality movies that don't come from Hollywood, if you want an example, Munje (a serbian one), or GORA (a turkish). Besides, almost all of the bandwidth with torrents now is movies anyway.

Re:Above the radar

[Cat9117600]

They'll be a direct target if they offer copyrighter material without permission. If they do this the right way, and sign on independent movies (which the article mentions) with permission from the makers, we might finally see p2p distribution of movies and music become legitimate, and Azureus become a place to get good, independent legal media.

Re:Above the radar

[microbrewer]

The RIAA and MPPA sell content on a p2p network

www.peerimpact.com

Re:Above the radar

[rolfwind]

They don't have to offer anything period, legitimate nor otherwise.

The bittorent protocol is used a lot of time legitimately - linux ISOs, people sharing their large digital camera files of events with friends, etcetera.

Suing Azureas (or another bittorent company) would be like suing the internet in general, for being something that is used sometimes llegally, by third parties, in some cases. Just like GM could be sued for providing cars to people who use them illegally in some cases (speeding, hit-n-run, get-away cars).

AFAIK, they aren't like Napster, who actually promoted themselves and was more active in facilitating copyright infringement.

Re:Above the radar

[cptgrudge]

The bittorent protocol is used a lot of time legitimately

This cannot be stressed enough. I know that anecdotal stories aren't worth much, but I used Azureus over the past few weeks to download Debian ISOs, some high-res videos created by a WOW guild, and a few more ISOs of Ubuntu. To be fair, I did download one recording of a TV show episode that has now been taken off the air. (Rumor was a C&D and threat of lawsuit.)

With Napster, I didn't download anything off of there that could be considered "fair use" or legitimately distributed.

Re:Above the radar

[Chabil Ha']

I think that it would be naive to think that Torrents in general have been under the Content Pimp's radar, but this certainly has elevated the alert on us moving in on their content whores.

I think the real tradgedy lies in the fact that they are bundling all this junk with a great program. I understand at some point the P2P technology surrounding torrents can only be developed to a point where you have to differentiate yourself with the bloatware gizmos. Shucks...too bad.

If nothing else good comes out of it, I think it also raises the legitmacy of a P2P network for open information and creativity.

Re:Above the radar

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is eventually going to be radically reformed or abolished, and there is nothing you can do about it, you fucking fascist.

Re:Above the radar

[elrous0]

I mostly use it for downloading video podcasts like Diggnation, Greekdrome, TWIT, etc. I think I've only used it for..ahem..."un-licensed" material 3 or 4 times in the last two years.

-Eric

"Platform?"

[hunterx11]

Am I the only one who thinks that this really means that it is going to be the next Kazaa?

Re:"Platform?"

[BPinard]

Exactly what I was thinking. This is bad news. Good thing I've been using uTorrent for a while now.

Re:"Platform?"

[JulesLt]

Absolutely.

Actually the wider pattern is :

Build company doing something cool for free to get users.
Whore users off to advertisers.
Users go to next company doing something cool for free.

If you're really lucky you get to sell your company somewhere between steps 2 and 3.

Re:"Platform?"

[secolactico]

Good thing I've been using uTorrent for a while now.

I love utorrent. I just wish there was a Linux version or alternative. I used to use the btdownloadcurses, but it becomes cumbersome when you want to leech/seed several torrents at once.

Re:"Platform?"

[nkh]

try launchmany-curses.py if you want to download many torrents at the same time, for example: launchmany-curses.py --max_upload_rate 5 . to download all the torrents of the current directory, and on Mac OS X, if you drag and drop new torrents in this directory, these new torrents are automagically added to the download list.

Re:"Platform?"

[ScrewMaster]

I dropped Azureus because it's a resource hog of Biblical proportions, like a lot of big Java apps. uTorrent isn't as feature rich but it's got one Hell of a lot smaller footprint.

Re:"Platform?"

[jZnat]

You don't consider Windows to have a huge memory footprint itself? Or are you running muTorrent on Windows 98 or something?

Re:"Platform?"

[fimbulvetr]

Use screen to btdownloadcurses:

Start:

screen btdownloadcurses foo.torrent

Detach:

ctrl-a,d

Reattach:

screen -r (pid of screen session)

List of screen sessions:

screen -list

Easy and sleezy.

Re:"Platform?"

[ttldkns]

check out rtorrent, its an ncurses bittorrent cient with support for downloading and seeding multiple torrents, has down/up rate limiting, a nifty fast resume feature and the ability to select which files within a torrent you want to download. Also has a "pure seeding" mode where it will just seed your torrents. Its pretty cool and runs nicely in screen. You can set up default settings in ~/.rtorrentrc and they have an example one in their wiki. The only thing i miss about azureus is safepeer and texting me when the torrents have finished.

Re:"Platform?"

[ScrewMaster]

That's irrelevant, the operating system is overhead. I'm comparing two applications (Azureus and uTorrent) that perform the same function while running in the same OS environment. One is a pig and the other is remarkably frugal.

Re:"Platform?"

[TheSpoom]

Yeah, and just watch their usage plummet like a stone once they actually release the adware-bundled version.

They're getting greedy, that's all.

Re:"Platform?"

[Captain Splendid]

Speaking as a complete hippie who thinks the world already runs too much on money, how is building a kick-ass piece of software and wanting to make a little cash out of it greedy?

Re:"Platform?"

[phyrz]

i would love to see how long you'd last when the bandwidth is burning a hole in your pocket.

Re:"Platform?"

[moro_666]

hmmm , this rtorrent is written in what ?

azureus was written in java last time i checked. to make it worse it used regular swing gui components so it was slow as hell as the result.

i'd prefer a platformed nongui version, preferrably written in C so i wouldn't even notice it running :)

Re:"Platform?"

[ejdmoo]

Just switched. Should have a long time ago, for many reasons.

Re:"Platform?"

[PygmySurfer]

Personally, I like TorrentFlux. It's PHP-based, so I can access it from anywhere - handy when I stumble upon something while I'm at work.

Re:"Platform?"

[PygmySurfer]

How is bandwidth burning a hole in Azureus' pocket? The only bandwidth hit they incur is when somebody downloads their client, and there are ways around that, even (sourceforge, download.com, etc).

Re:"Platform?"

[kv9]

i'd prefer a platformed nongui version, preferrably written in C so i wouldn't even notice it running :)

it's your lucky day. rtorrent is written around a very nice C++ library (hence the site name), so you can even hack your own client pretty easily if you don't like that one. and it's really easy on the resources a vast improvement over all the python crazyness (i won't even mention azureus' java `magic'). highly recommended for console junkies. combine that with screen and you have yourself a fucking textual party. also for quick and dirty jobs i've had good experiences with ctorrent.

disclaimer: yes i am a rtorrent fanboi, but on Windows uTorrent remains king.

Re:"Platform?"

[evilneko]

Or users continue to use the old version...

Re:"Platform?"

[ttldkns]

sound advice there, mate. I'd like to join you in the rtorrent fan club, exactly the thing i needed for linux.

Re:"Platform?"

[AnyoneEB]

Uh, azureus used SWT (native widgets; same as Eclipse) last I checked... which was a long time ago.

Re:"Platform?"

[osgeek]

Because everyone is entitled to everything for free, didn't ya know? :)

I kind of like the status quo where free software can exist side-by-side with capitalism. Let the two ideas compete in the world and see where the balance between them will settle.

It's kind of amazing to me that people can be so bitter about this turn of events with Azureus. I'd be willing to bet money that 99.9% of the people complaining never donated a dime to help the project.

I got some good use out of Azureus, and I never paid anything either; but they definitely have my gratitude for a job well done. If they want to find other ways to make continued development financially feasible, then more power to them.

Re:"Platform?"

[Arker]

Am I the only one who thinks that this really means that it is going to be the next Kazaa?

No, you're not alone, you're in the company of all the other commentors that couldn't be bothered to read the article.

Re:"Platform?"

[secolactico]

I used that approach before. But I preferred to restrict incoming torrent connections to a single port. That way I didn't have to punch multiple holes and set up multiple NAT in my firewall.

Re:"Platform?"

[moro_666]

swt ? last time i checked that swt thing crashed java 1.5 with a segfault.

this is something that you really don't expect from a java app. :)

  a clean sheet of objects built directly on awt component and directly invoking paint on cached graphics (repaint is evil, don't use it unless you know what it does) method gave far better response than any of the awt/swing toolkits and didn't segfault the machine, why can't they just use that for their components. it was fast with 1.3, fast enough to make internet casinos and live animations.

  if an app segfaults it also means that the barrier of security was breached, if that isn't there, why wouldn't we need java in the first place ? so i could have a non secure application running on a secure platform and just for fun grabbing 50mbytes of ram at start ?

  and if i know that the thing can segfault on me, it also means that hacker kiddies have a good chance to insert stuff into the pc memory that shouldn't be there, one clumsy buffer overflow from setting an inputfield value (let's say a really really long file name with weird symbols in addition into the torrent) and the stuff will be there and may even be executed by java as bytecode ? (java has no idea about the nx flag for bytecode). sounds just great :)

thnx but no thnx.

fast stuff can be written in java, safe and fast stuff. look at resin webserver , even without the native extension, it's faster than the default apache that you set up. the problem isn't in the java language, it's in the implementator's head. adding an unsafe new thingy that isn't incredibly faster to it doesn't really resolve the problem, it adds one.

Re:"Platform?"

[AnyoneEB]

Odd, I've never had problems with SWT, but, yes, it can segfault because it is native code. If AWT or Swing actually had reasonable performance, than it would probably not exist. If you can implement Swing in a way that it runs fast, then please join the GNU Classpath project and do so.

Re:"Platform?"

[squidsuk]

I stand to be corrected, but from what I see it doesn't appear to be adware, or at the very least not adware in any conventional sense that the term is usually used.

Don't forget that Azureus is not just free but free/libre open-source. Software like that isn't susceptible to some of the usual sort of adware/spyware/whatever commercialisation nonsense, since if attempted the software would just be forked anyway.

Just as might happen with this, anyway - either the developers might offer an "Azureus light" without the content layer, or if they didn't then the "light" version might well be a fork. As long as it's all open-sourced then it'll be fine.

Commercially produced software that is also libre, on the other hand, is all to the good, and more power to their elbow.

Re:"Platform?"

[hunterx11]

Because obviously a commercial venture would never be less than forthcoming about opportunities to make money at the expense of consumers. At the very least, this will provide an opportunity to track media viewing habits overtly.

Re:"Platform?"

[popeguilty]

Yeah, what's stopping a group of programmers from grabbing the code, renaming it "Nonwhore Azureus", and releasing it?

Re:"Platform?"

[Frozen Void]

We have Utorrent and the competition will never allow such opportunities to go to waste(publicity). Azureus signed its suicide note. Not to mention a single possible link to anti-p2p groups would spell ruin
to BT clients (the Utorrent had to make a disclaimer on the front page,just becuase of rumors).

Re:"Platform?"

[Bacon Bits]

Indeed. This is exactly why I no longer buy my food from "grocery stores". Instead, I just steal what I need to eat the food I find.

Quite obviously, anybody out to make money is only interested in taking my money, not in providing a service I might want to pay for. Exchange money for goods and services?! The very idea is laughable.

Re:"Platform?"

[hunterx11]

So grocery stores wouldn't sell expired food if they knew they could get away with it?

Re:"Platform?"

[phyrz]

Damn you're right. I apologise.

Re:"Platform?"

[Bacon Bits]

Not if they want to continue to have customers.

Consistently offending or disappointing your customer base drives customers elsewhere. Why do people run Linux when Microsoft has a 90% market share and a much larger software library? Why do people avoid going to WalMart? Bad consumer image.

Re:"Platform?"

[ultranova]

azureus was written in java last time i checked. to make it worse it used regular swing gui components so it was slow as hell as the result.

Azureus uses SWT, but it can be also run in textmode with "-u console". Saves a lot of memory (from 100MB down to 30MB), but makes setting options hard :(. Also throws IOExceptions ("already closed") regularly, but they don't seem to cause any problems.

I use command line like java -classpath "commons-cli-1.0.jar:log4j-1.2.13.jar:Azureus2.3.0 .6.jar" "org.gudy.azureus2.ui.common.Main" -u console to run it. The other jars are from Apache Software Foundation.

Re:"Platform?"

[ultranova]

Odd, I've never had problems with SWT, but, yes, it can segfault because it is native code. If AWT or Swing actually had reasonable performance, than it would probably not exist. If you can implement Swing in a way that it runs fast, then please join the GNU Classpath project and do so.

Funny, based on the few programs I've made with Java (a Swing-based animation library and a picture-viewing program) Swing is fast; it's Azureus's SWT which is slow. However, making that picture-viewing program fast and bug-free was difficult, since it involved making sure that the event thread never blocks and doesn't have to acquire synchronization locks during repaints. So, I'd say that at least part of Swing's reputation for slowness probably comes from programs that perform heavy (or even light, if repeated often enough) data manipulation on the Swing event thread, since that is the easiest way - offloading all work to worker threads and having them communicate back through SwingUtilities.invokeLater() works and keeps Swing fast, but it is also tricky, especially since you can't start an infinite amount of worker threads, can't let the work queue grow boundlessly, and can't let the event thread block waiting for a free thread.

Re:"Platform?"

[AnyoneEB]

Interesting. I write some Swing code in my free time, I only recently learned of the existance of invokeLater(). I don't suppose there's a guide somewhere on how to write Swing code correctly? Or is it basically, "Use invokeLater() as much as possible in actionPerformed()."?

Re:"Platform?"

[drix]

Yes, infallible logic there. uTorrent is closed source, written by one guy, and is sending God-knows-what to God-knows-whom every time you pirate those mp3s. Azureus is open source, developed by a team of people from all over the world, and would be forked faster than you can say suprnova if they tried to do something sleazy with it.

Re:"Platform?"

[hunterx11]

Microsoft and Walmart are both enormously successful despite their misdeeds, and don't even have any close competition.

Next time, try to frame your argument in the form of statements which support your point rather than refute it.

Re:"Platform?"

[TheSpoom]

I'll be the first to say it: I'm a cynic. Nothing's wrong with wanting to make a little cash. However, something is wrong with taking a free project and making it, essentially, a non-free project. I'm not saying Azureus is necessarily going to do this (and according to a sibling post it may be open source anyway, so it might not matter), but so many times in the past (e.g. Napster, Kazaa, Suprnova) I've seen a great P2P project corrupted by greed into something much worse than the original. That's not simply making a piece of software to make money (which again, is fine, considering I make a living off of development), it's taking a previously free piece of software and forcing ads down the throats of people who want the new version. IMHO, that's not fine, and I'm not going to stay with them if they do that.

Re:"Platform?"

[ultranova]

Interesting. I write some Swing code in my free time, I only recently learned of the existance of invokeLater(). I don't suppose there's a guide somewhere on how to write Swing code correctly? Or is it basically, "Use invokeLater() as much as possible in actionPerformed()."?

I don't know about any guides, I mostly just used the Java API reference (downloaded from Sun's website) and a simple rule of thumb: anything more computer-intensive than reading or writing a single variable goes to a separate thread, and the standard paint path (the paintComponent method) shouldn't use any synchronization (easily avoidable by using the invokeLater() method to queue a Runnable to make any chances to variables read by the paintComponent method).

Basically, I used a thread pool to hold "worker" threads, and had the Swing thread queue Runnables to it for processing, then those runnables would queue another Runnable via invokeLater() to do any updates to the GUI that are needed.

Mind you, the whole thing ended up horribly complex, since I insisted on making it a single class (and lots of anonymous and non-anonymous inner classes), but it works, works fast and is bug-free (as far as I can tell).

However, it turned out that the default Java image scaling is too slow to be usefull to my original concept of an image-viewing application that could hold lots of images open simultaneously while consuming little memory by reloading the image data as needed (SoftReference is your friend). The project started originally since eog has so much integration with other Gnome programs that it's not very usable when you have a 100+ images open - it takes an absurdly long time to open eog windows then. It isn't funny that you need to update the whole Gnome just to update eog.

Anyway, the directory viewing/thumbnailing class works perfectly, even if it's a horrible mess ;). The individual image viewer doesn't work so well :(.

And the animation library, of course, just runs in a loop, where it first updates sprites and then draws them. No thread-related issues there, since it all runs in the Swing event thread.

I can only hope

[isaacklinger]

Their choice to bundle adware will decrease their market share. Their BitTorrent client is slow and enourmously resource hungry. They don't belong in the most used BitTorrent clients list.

Re:I can only hope

[TheRaven64]

I've only used it on OS X, and here it is a travesty. The GUI doesn't do live resizing (unlike every other OS X app). You often need to do a small resize to persuade the GUI to actually draw in the right place. The widgets don't behave quite like the ones that look the same in other apps. After an hour or so of use, it climbs to over 0.5GB of RAM usage (in-core size, not just VM size). It somehow seems to leak CPU - after a couple of hours it will be using 100% of my CPU for no observable reason.

I am not sure how much of this is due to Azureus and how much to SWT, but whatever the cause the result is a completely unusable product.

Re:I can only hope

[Hackeron]

Yes, you're right, but what do you use instead? - What else supports encryption (absolutely must for most UK users these days to avoid throttling) and allows you to prioritize files in a collection? And has all those other useful features like decentralised source sharing, etc?

Re:I can only hope

[lucas teh geek]

although i have no concrete proof, i believe it sucks on osx because the ppc java virtual machine is poo. (i dont have an intel mac so i cant say if its any better on osx/intel). i have an old 1GHz windows pc with a mere 1/2 GB of ram that i do my torrenting on because its just much less sluggish, and thats using it over remote desktop. i really hope the switch to intel leads to a more optimised JVM for the new macs

Re:I can only hope

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is that OS X's Java VM is absolute crap.

Re:I can only hope

[MoonBuggy]

Problem is, what else is out there for the Mac? I'm still using Azureus with pretty much the same problems as you simply because I can't find anything that offers the nice 'traditional P2P' two pane interface with the close-up detail windows for each torrent, nor the ability to pick and choose or prioritise files within a torrent. Anyone out there got any recomendations (OSX compatible)? uTorrent looks like exactly what I need, but it's windows only.

Re:I can only hope

[todd10k]

"They don't belong in the most used BitTorrent clients list."

Lies. Azureus is great for what i use it for. Upnp support, encryption, graphical swarm trees, the ability to download only from specific seeders/peers, the ability to throttel my speeds at will...The list goes on. Alot of people say azureus is bloated, but those people have not availed of azureus` full range of features. It more than deserves it's place at the top of the list. However, i am nervous as to this "advertising" that's going to be implimented. if it's implimented in a non-invasive, "banner ad" type way, i will continue to use Azureus as my client of choice. However, if they impliment "tracking cookies, website loggers" etc, and take my information, then by god ill make the switch to uTorrent faster than you can say "John mcgillacuddy"

Re:I can only hope

[hackstraw]

I've only used it on OS X, and here it is a travesty. The GUI doesn't do live resizing (unlike every other OS X app). You often need to do a small resize to persuade the GUI to actually draw in the right place. The widgets don't behave quite like the ones that look the same in other apps. After an hour or so of use, it climbs to over 0.5GB of RAM usage (in-core size, not just VM size). It somehow seems to leak CPU - after a couple of hours it will be using 100% of my CPU for no observable reason.

I am not sure how much of this is due to Azureus and how much to SWT, but whatever the cause the result is a completely unusable product.

I concur. I had the exact same experience and thus concluded that it was unusable.

I get punished all the time around here when I bash Java, but Azureus is yet another example where it just seems to be true that Java for cross platform GUI platform lives up to the saying "write once, debug everywhere". Matlab, SAS, Wordperfect, Oracle Universal Installer, you name it, I get the email or phone call saying "Its broken again...". People defend Java saying that nobody on the planet knows how to do Java correctly, and that is the problem. They are probably correct. Now, mod me down.

Re:I can only hope

[linhux]

I use Bits On Wheels. It's closed source and doesn't have all the niftiest features, but it works quite well for me.

Re:I can only hope

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Encryption is hardly necessary for "most"; BT themselves don't do any traffic shaping.

I do occasionally check their info page though, to see if they've changed it..

Re:I can only hope

[isaacklinger]

If you're using Windows, switch to uTorrent. It has all the features you mentioned -- enctyption, decentralized tracking. On other systems... uTorrent running on Wine? Virtual Machine?

Re:I can only hope

[Dis*abstraction]

It's not just performance, though that would be bad enough. It's also the look and feel, including some very bizarre choices by the UI designers (if they even have any) about what features to expose where and to whom, aside from all the aforementioned problems with "ghastly undead widgets" syndrome and lack of integration into Mac OS X.

Re:I can only hope

[Dis*abstraction]

I prefer the pithier "Write once, suck everywhere."

Re:I can only hope

[phyrz]

true, but it hes definitly improved in it's unresponsive, crash prone, and resource hungry ways. still, put a few torrents to work and you need a second pc. i figure its bittorrent in general. haven't tried uTorrent yet though.

Re:I can only hope

[Arker]

Your experience is not congruent with mine.

I use it on OSX, have been for 3 years now. The GUI isn't perfect, yes, that's true, but I don't much care. It has the features I want exposed, even if it did take slightly longer to find them all. The interface is definitely a bit slow too, I'll grant... but it's no big deal.

It does take a nice big chunk of memory, but I haven't experienced any 'leaks' and CPU usage, while significant, is stable. I generally close it if I'm going to play an FPS or the like, but it's not a problem to keep it open while using the web, email, or whatnot.

And this is on a fairly old Mac, a ~600MgHz G4.

Re:I can only hope

[Blakey Rat]

"The GUI isn't perfect" has to be the understatement of the year. I can't think of any non-X11 OS X apps with a worse interface... except Lotus Notes (also Java.)

Re:I can only hope

[Arker]

Honestly, why should I care?

This is a utility program, not a beauty pageant contestant.

It's got a job to do. It does it, as well or better than any other option.

The GUI isn't pretty, but it is superbly functional. Just about anything you might ever need to do with a .torrent is there. And 99% of the time, it's down in the dock doing its stuff with the GUI swapped out anyhow.

And I disagree that it's a 'bad interface' - it's just not a particularly pretty one. A *bad interface*, to me, would be one that doesn't allow me to access a function I need, or one that misleads me, misdirects me, into doing x when I wanted to do y. So the Azureus interface is actually a pretty good one, I'd say.

Of course, if you honestly think it's more important to look good, than to function well, then I guess it's not for you...

Re:I can only hope

[DRM_is_Stupid]

What the parent post and grand-parent post is missing in their comments is mention of whether they are using Macs with Intel Dual Core for Azureus. SWT (a component used by Azureus + Eclipse) haven't been ported to the Mac-Intel Architecture yet, and thus either requires Rosetta emulation or it just doesn"t properly work. It's been four months already, and still Adobe, SWT, all open source video players and Office suites haven't been ported yet to that platform. As you can see, this isn't a problem about Java, but a problem about applications switching to a new platform. If the Azureus team kept a 100% pure Java version of Azureus that used something like Swing, they wouldn't have to suffer the tradeoff that came with using JNI.

Re:I can only hope

[level_headed_midwest]

I would second your post. I have fought with a rather expensive specialized program (PIXCI's XCAP camera software) written in Java and it is absolutely what you describe- slow, buggy, and crappy on both Windows and Linux. However, Azureus runs like a gazelle compared to XCAP. Maybe Java just has a continuum of crappiness from "just slightly crappy" down to "Windows ME."

Re:I can only hope

[Hackeron]

I don't think you understand. 80% of UK ISPs blindly throttle bittorrent by protocol header to 20KB/sec or bellow, so you cannot change the port number or make sure your firewall is configured correctly or anything else. Without RC4 encryption there is no hope of getting speeds better than a fifth of the provided bandwidth or bellow, even on the new 8mbps expensive contracts.

Please see this: http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Bad_ISPs

Re:I can only hope

[numpins]

I agree with you. I keep using Azureus because it has a lot of features that I can't find elsewhere and it's a workhorse. Ditto on the interface and because many of the advanced options I'm looking for aren't hidden. Instead, they come with educational labels or tooltips.

I'm also impressed by the plug-ins because they are hosted online but the installation wizard provides descriptions and makes for a one-click install. The auto-update system is excellent: notify user of update, download update, *share* udpate (as a good P2P app should), and then remove update automatically.

Ditto on the CPU utilization, no problems here and I'm running a 600 MHz G3 (with 640 MB of RAM).

I don't mind that they remind users that, while the program is free (as in libre) software, it takes a lot of work and donations are welcome. I think that's one solution to bringing money into free software -- grassroots education that inspires generous action. If there's no notification or outlet for users to donate and participate, it shouldn't be surprising that they don't.

I could go on and on about this proect...but in the end, "I dig it."

Re:I can only hope

[todd10k]

" If Azureus is great, why would you switch to uTorrent so quickly?" Quite simply, i dispise spyware. Of any form. That being said, im not ignorant of the way the world works. i know that people need to get paid, that people need to eat. that money needs to come from somewhere, and that money is usually derived from ad revenue. But i will NOT BE SPYED UPON. ever.

This will be a good thing...

[Omicron32]

As long as there is no way the same media companies can track what you download elsewhere, I don't see the problem in this. Is Azereus open source? If it is there won't really be a way to hide snooping software in there.

I believe it'll be a good thing that will help Bittorrent be seen in a better light. I just hope it'll remain as cross-platform as the bittorrent client.

Re:This will be a good thing...

[TubeSteak]

Is Azereus open source? If it is there won't really be a way to hide snooping software in there.

There's also no way to prevent someone from stripping out the content layer and offering up Azureus 'Light'.

The bittorrent n00blets will use the content layered version, the semi-paranoid "OMG teh RIAA" group will use 'Light' offering.

I see no problems here, it might even mean more eyeballs on the AZ source code.

Re:This will be a good thing...

[kdemetter]

From the article : 'The new content layer will not affect the functionality of the BitTorrent layer. No filters or other measures will be introduced to block traffic objected to by the owners of the media using the content layer. ' So I don't think there's a problem there . It's still a bittorent client , external torrent files will still work . The only problem is that it will be even bigger . A light version would be nice.

Not a terribly bright idea.

[Darlantan]

If they make it annoying at all, what's to prevent people from switching to the slew of other BT apps out there? Given the fact that advertising is almost always made to catch the eye, it'll have a hard time not annoying users. Frankly, I'd switch to something else even if it was a static clickable banner.

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[Darlantan]

Note that I'm assuming they'll have some more direct system tacked on than a screen with a URL in the new media. That may not be the case, but unless the new stuff is really awesome, I don't see it getting enough hits to make the people paying to have it there really happy.

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[leonmergen]

What do they have to lose ? It's not like they're earning money with it at the moment... they're just trying to, if it works, yay for them, it if doesn't, too bad but not much harm done for them (unless the entire development process relied on a future commercialization of Azureus, which I highly doubt...)

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[Blakey Rat]

It's already annoying. It's Java, which of course means that the GUI looks like something that comes from the planet Weebo-- well, ok, I don't know what planet it comes from, but it's certainly not Earth where Mac OS and Windows reside. Full of all those little bugs that don't really affect how it runs, but drive you up the wall anyway-- mostly things not refreshing when they change.

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[ziplux]

Um, no, you're wrong about the interface. Azureus is one of the few large projects (besides Eclipse) using SWT, IBM's take on cross-platform GUIs. SWT is similar to wxWindows in that it uses native widgets whereever possible, which means Azureus and Eclipse look like native applications.

It is not easy to tell that Azureus is a Java app...it even comes in a standard executable package for Windows.

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[Blakey Rat]

I have a Macintosh and I've downloaded and used Azureus and I beg to differ.

In fact, because I'm extremely bored, I'll even re-download it just to give you an idea of where it goes wrong.

This Azureus 2.4.0.2 on OS X:

1) The first thing I see is a configuration wizard. Unfortunately, the buttons and layout are not the same as any OS X wizard.

2) At the same time I get the configuration wizard, I get Azureus Updater which tells me I need to restart. Already I'm confused; do I update first, or do the wizard first? The wizard window is in front, so let's start with that.

3) After saying my user proficiency is "beginner" the wizard asks me what my "line" and "Max Up Speed" is. "Max Up Speed?" WTF does that even mean? All the options are adsl/cable xxx/ kbps. Now I happen to know what they mean; the xxx represents any download speed, and the represents the upload speed, but anybody who honestly marks "beginner" isn't going to be able to answer this question.

4) Then it gets even more arcane. NAT/Server Port. HELLO!? DID YOU NOT SEE ME MARK BEGINNER!? Again, no beginner could possibly answer this question.

5) When the wizard is done, I get a "Completed" screen. But the "Finish" button is greyed out, instead I see a "Close" button I can click. Why have a "Finish" button at all if it's never used?!

6) The Updater (which I'm doing now because the main window popped out behind it, so I assume that's the next step) gave me an error, which I'd copy and paste here, but I can't because the text in the error message isn't selectable. Suffice it to say that the error message isn't a sheet in OS X (which is wrong), has a big-fat red X icon (wrong) and two buttons: "Details" and "Hide" (wrong, and wrong... and Details is a round-rect button for some reason while Hide is a normal one.)

7) So I hide that message and I get "automatic removal of torrent "azplugins_2.0..." oh I can't type it because the error disappears. Suffice it to say that it's an error message that nobody who marked "Beginner" in the wizard is going to understand.

8) Program preferences shows up as a tabbed window in the interface, not in a dialog. This is wrong.

9) Despite having no options to set in Proxy Options, Transport Network Settings, Transport Encryption, etc, those items still appear in the preferences list... they just have some explanatory test saying I can't access them because I said I was a beginner. BTW, no beginner can have a proxy? So if I have a proxy, and know all the information for it, by definition I can't possibly be a beginner?

10) I've wasted enough time on this already. But I'll just quickly add: Although it uses OS X widgets, the spacing and placement is all off, and it still looks like a planet Weebo app and not an OS X one. It's got the requisite Java slowness. The errors where windows wouldn't refresh correctly all the time seems to be fixed, at least. But the updater is moronic and everything about it is difficult to use, despite having a "beginner" setting.

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[ZachPruckowski]

Here's my question:

Can't I just hide it? I mean, when I download anything from the internet, I click to download, then hide the progress window. The experience was similar when I got OpenOffice and Ubuntu over BitTorrent. If I can just minimize/hide the app, who cares about an ad?

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true it doesn't fit in quite that well with Mac OS X. It fits in very well with Windows, and fairly well with Linux, on both of which a crazy app with themes with clowns, flip switches, huge red glowing buttons, and hotdogs seems to fit in well.

Re:Not a terribly bright idea.

[swelke]

If they make it annoying at all... SOMEONE WILL FORK IT. It's still open source. That's part of the beauty of open source software.

Bram's Client

[cerelib]

I would have to say that I prefer the official BitTorrent client from Bram Cohen. It is a simple, elegant solution. I do notice that every time I look at a peer list it is filled with Azureus, but only a handful of the official client. Azureus is just too large of a program for the purpose of jumping on to a swarm and downloading. And now they want to add more to it. BitTorrent is really good for a few things like minimizing bandwidth for content distributors, but people want to bend it to be a general purpose p2p network.

Re:Bram's Client

[Parham]

You should give uTorrent a try if you like a small elegant client. I switched from the original BitTorrent to BitTornado to uTorrent, which I think is the best one out there right now.

Re:Bram's Client

[houghi]

houghi@penne : sh utorrent.exe
utorrent.exe: utorrent.exe: cannot execute binary file

Re:Bram's Client

[Anonymous Coward]

I use uTorrent myself. A while ago, my isp (rogers.com) decided to start throttling bittorrent. I need encryption enabled to get by their throttling and get decent speeds. Before I switched to uTorrent I tried many other BT clients, but I must say uTorrent is the best one I've come across so far. Runs alot faster then Azereus and uses less cpu/mem resources. Check it out here http://www.utorrent.com/

Re:Bram's Client

[Andronicus]

Don't confuse protocol with application. It's not that people may want to bend BitTorrent to p2p use, this is what BitTorrent does! It implements p2p data transfer. How you apply that ability is up to you as an application developer.

It happens to be the case for the most part that most applications implementing BitTorrent have the purpose of enabling file transfer in general. New novel applications however embed BitTorrent transport functionality for a specific purpose, say a Podcast catcher, for example.

It would be more corrent to say that the people behind Azureus development may be looking to build a media P2P application using the BitTorrent protocol.

Or, future Azureus releases could look more like a pay-to-play movie player, offering a menu of content for you to pick, buy, and watch, having been transferred to you using the BitTorrent protocol.

Re:Bram's Client

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, done that. I used to use Azureus, then mainly because of it being a Java program, and also because it's so heavy on resources I switched to uTorrent.
While refreshingly small and elegant and at the same time feature-rich, somehow it doesn't work as good as Azureus. I mean, I am on ADSL, and every single KBps counts for me.
So now I'm back with Azureus.

Re:Bram's Client

[Anonymous Coward]

uTorrent is a simple, elegant solution. :-)

http://www.utorrent.com/

Re:Bram's Client

[Anonymous Coward]

Azureus has a bigger memory footprint than some other clients, but it was designed as an excercise in what full implementation of the protocol in java would look like.

On a decent machine, it's resource usage is not a factor.
Efficient usage requires a bit of thought and configuration of cache and mem settings, placing it outside the skill level of half the internet community.
I can run 20 torrents on a 6mb/768K connection and still burn dvd's at 8X.
Microtorrent is not opensource and the author has ties with anti-p2p groups.
Azureus has encryption capabilites to mask what is being transferred from snooping isp's.
Bram's client is rudimentary at best, and unsuitable for anyone wanting to run a large number of torrents at once.

Re:Bram's Client

[Cal Paterson]

Exactly. uTorrent isn't Free and Open. It's not in the same ballpark as a client like Azureus anyway; Azureus is aimed at the user looking for features. You're not gonna get many Azureus to uTorrent converts.

Re:Bram's Client

[ssego]

WHAT?!? uTorrent does just about everything Azureus does.. but without the memory problems Java brings..

Re:Bram's Client

[Blakey Rat]

It looks ok on Mac OS and Linux (but only because all Linux apps are ugly), but it's eye-scarringly hideous on Windows.

Also I have problems sometimes getting the official client to download from certain sites... sometimes they require some kind of feature or something that the official client doesn't implement and you end up with a download that never starts. I mostly use it on Mac, though, so maybe that's only the Mac version.

Re:Bram's Client

[Anonymous Coward]

I did exactly that, switching from Azureus to uTorrent. I find that uTorrent does everything that Azureus did, without the massive memory footprint. I would like for it to be FOSS, but I'm not willing to sacrifice performance and usability for that.

Re:Bram's Client

[Ilgaz]

I use OS X "official" client too. Never failed except one build, it was updated in hours.

It seems Mac community thinks like me looking to its download numbers vs others on versiontracker/macupdate.

Re:Bram's Client

[dslauson]

I'm in full agreement. If you're on a Windows machine, uTorrent is the way to go. My biggest complaint about Azureus (aside from the plans to go ad-supported) is the memory footprint associated with running it in the Java Runtime Environment. Maybe I just need to break down and upgrade my computer, but in the meantime, uTorrent is a small, effecient, fully featured bittorrent client. Good stuff.

Re:Bram's Client

[Arker]

That's wierd, it never worked for me on my Mac, and I've tried half a dozen builds. Won't even run.

Azureus works like a champ, though, and I've never seen the problems other folks are talking about. It has a fairly hefty memory footprint, yes, and it's not the prettiest thing, but it gets the job done, and I've not noticed memory leaks or increasing cpu usage with it.

Re:Bram's Client

[hubrix]

wine utorrent.exe

Re:Bram's Client

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Did you try it with Wine? Not flamebait, just curious if it'll run...

Re:Bram's Client

[evilneko]

There's one thing uTorrent (or any other client, for that matter) hasn't matched.
Azureus's queuing/seeding priority system. It may be unimportant to leechers, but as for me, it's the reason I keep Azureus.

Re:Bram's Client

[houghi]

I do not have wine installed, so no idea. If I would want to run a Windows program, I rather do it on a native system.

Re:Bram's Client

[aj50]

rTorrent

Light and resonably featureful.

Re:Bram's Client

[Anonymous Coward]

works with latest wine. 9.10 and below dont work tho.

Time to use a different client

[Anonymous Coward]

This will cause people to switch to a different bit torrent client.

Re:Time to use a different client

[thdexter]

Yep.

Today's the day I make the switch to uTorrent. It's a single executable file less than 160 kb in size.

Re:Time to use a different client

[ArcSecond]

Welcome to the club. I gave up on Azureus a few months ago. (Micro)torrent is a really good app.

Re:Time to use a different client

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Took a look at their site and it looks like they have some uncomfortable ties to the copyright cartel, and they're enough smoke they've spent quite a few words to convince us there's no fire. I think I'll stick with open source clients.

Re:Time to use a different client

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

You have a problem with copyrights whenever they're used to stop people from distributing pirated movies and warez, but you're all for them when they're used to protect GPL software? You're a hypocrite.

Re:Time to use a different client

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Exactly. And that's not a hypocritical position--the fact that the GPL derives its power from copyright law is a clever hack which wouldn't be necessary if copyright didn't exist. You see, for the GPL to be invalid, so must copyright law. Of course you no doubt already know this and are just trolling. Love your books, BTW.

Re:Time to use a different client

[DaedalusHKX]

Ktorrent, GnomeTorrent (and Gnome is a GNU FSF app so you can expect it to be as ANTI DRM as it can be so long as the FSF stays true to RMS's vision (Richard M. Stallman, for those of you who need your geek cards revoked). :) I'm noticing a disturbing trend towards closed source solutions and commercialization.

Re:Time to use a different client

[Anonymous Coward]

Does GPL software ask you to pay money in order to be allowed to use it?

No?

Then how is he a hypocrite?

Fork.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

The client is open source, no?

Re:Fork.

[MoogleEXE]

Yes, of course -- http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ So all it takes if this happens is to wait for someone with better coding skills then mine to create an unofficial "patch", right? Then what's the big fiasco?

Re:Fork.

[Torham]

Better than that, it is Free Software licensed under the GPL.

Re:Fork.

[swelke]

Azureus is licensed under the GPL. The license danger with Azureus isn't the source itself, but the VM. As far as I know, you need Sun's JVM to run the blamed thing, and that is NOT free software or open source or even very nicely licensed.

Re:Fork.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I haven't tried it myself, but another poster in this topic mentioned that it ran under Kaffe.

Re:Fork.

[swelke]

That would be nice. I hope it's true.

Ah, I see...

[Bacon Bits]

BitTorrent + Steam + Multimedia content providers = profit.

All you have to do is, say, convince Cartoon Network or Sci-Fi to publish their TV shows (with commercials intact) through Azureus. Users provide most of the bandwidth, content is delivered in a manner that earns providers money, and Azureus takes a slice off the top.

And suddenly we won't see HBO suing for people downloading the latest Sopranos. We'll see HBO distributing episodes for $1-2 to anybody who wants on the private tracker. Or better yet, users simply subscribe to the HBO/Azureus service and can download any available content they want that month and view as they please. Keep the price reasonable and the only pirates you have to battle are the people who wouldn't pay for your service even if they couldn't decrypt your works.

Re:Ah, I see...

[novus ordo]

We'll see HBO distributing episodes for $1-2

Are you so sure about that?

Re:Ah, I see...

[Doytch]

That would require the networks to get their heads out of their asses. Uhhh, nope, not happening.

Re:Ah, I see...

[Bacon Bits]

Then they go under to the first business that does it right. Same as CD-ROM software instead of floppies. Same as cassette instead of vinyl, CD instead of cassette. Same as DVD instead of VHS.

In 10 years, consumer demand for eminantly portable digital content will be so widespread (and so ingrained because today's youth grew up with mp3s) that companies will adapt or die. A failing business model will fail. That's what it does. The first company to break ranks with MPAA/RIAA will make oodles of money. In 20 years, we (our generations) will be the people in control of the MPAA and RIAA. At that time, they will remember with fond loathing how their companies acted in the first decade. They will change. It is already too late for them. Any legislation now will just make the changes later that much more painful.

Re:Ah, I see...

[Arker]

That's the idea, except that folks like HBO aren't going to go for it, at least now. But there are thousands of filmmakers out there today, many of them doing better work than anything you'd see on TV, but languishing in obscurity without access to the monopolised distribution channels. Those are the folks they're going to be cutting deals with, it sounds like, and I think it sounds like a damn fine plan to me. I hope it works out.

Re:Ah, I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, that's not what would really happen - what will happen is that the companies will charge the same price as you would pay purchasing in a store, only this time they're using your bandwidth to provide it. If they provided 2 services - one where you pay, say, $2 per episode for direct downloads, or $1 for p2p (with an upload/download ratio requirement), only then would you probably see success.

A lot of people already have problems with blizzard forcing WoW patches to use bittorrent, even though it's probably the perfect situation for bittorrent - in fact, I'd argue it's basically the personal choice principle. If you force people into a position where they have to upload 300 mb to download a file, they'll be annoyed that you're stealing their bandwidth; if you make it an option, but it's the faster/cheaper option, I think it would be more accepted.

(of course, this is totally ignoring things like ISPs throttling bt ports/kicking off the biggest bt users, which would basically HAVE to stop if there was a major push towards legitimate content being sold over p2p networks. Someone like comcast would get in craploads of trouble for kicking off a grandmother for buying 50 episodes of an old tv show).

Re:Ah, I see...

[geminidomino]

. In 20 years, we (our generations) will be the people in control of the MPAA and RIAA. At that time, they will remember with fond loathing how their companies acted in the first decade. They will change.

You have far too much faith in human nature. I think it's more likely they'll remember with loathing who the Asses of America act now and think "Well it worked then and they made boatloads. And they even got all this lovely legislation in place to help US make bank now."

Re:Ah, I see...

[Bacon Bits]

Sure, whatever. I've already modified my buying habits. I don't spend anywhere near as much on stuff RIAA and MPAA own anymore. I also find I don't pirate, either. I just don't want what they offer anymore.

Re:Ah, I see...

[geminidomino]

And you're not the only one. Unfortunately, you ARE part of a minority small enough that any dent you make in thier sales will just be written off and fed to the press as "proof of 'piracy'"

color me not excited

[Anonymous Coward]

Another decentralized index of user-rated content, soon to include thousands of bots rating spyware and trojan-infected files as high quality worthwhile content.... just like every other P2P decentralized index created in the last 2 years.

Re:color me not excited

[poobread]

I fail to see why one BT client going to a corporate platorm would all of a sudden cause this.

Bitorrent has been used to share those kinds of files that appeared on kazaa, etc. for years already.

Dont Worry.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Im sure someone will come out with an 'Azureus Light' with all the garbage removed, much like Kazaa light in the past

well

[bwd]

It looks like it's time to migrate to utorrent if you haven't already. There no commercialization associated with it and it's much faster. The only downside is that it's for windows only.

Re:well

[1.000.000]

Yeah the closed source client. The one where the author Ludvig Strigeus now works in association with some anti-p2p company called PeerFactor. Good luck.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people have poked and prodded uTorrent pretty throughly and found nothing suspicious about it.

Re:well

[paulius_g]

And for Linux, use TorrentFlux which is a PHP torrent client which is controlable from the web.

It's really sweet and it's way nicer than VNCing to a Linux desktop filled with BitTorrent clients opened.

Re:well

[croddy]

Poking and prodding it with a debugger is NO. SUBSTITUTE. for reading the source code and then building your own.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

It certainly isn't, but I'm not sure of the kind of evil genius it would take to somehow sneak traffic past a skilled user.

Re:well

[WedgeTalon]

Recently, Torrent has been the subject of numerous articles as a result of the contract between Torrent's sole creator and developer, Ludvig Strigeus ("ludde"), and PeerFactor.

While PeerFactor has been involved in anti-P2P activities in the past, there is a large amount of misinformation being spread about Torrent, PeerFactor and the nature of the agreement.

        * No change has been made to Torrent as a result of the contract, and no changes will be made in the future. Torrent contains no anti-P2P component, IP logging or other monitoring as falsely reported by some websites, and is not affiliated with the RIAA or MPAA.
        * PeerFactor is no longer associated with RetSpan, and furthermore, Ludvig is in no way affiliated with RetSpan. Ludvig does not "work for RetSpan", nor does he work for PeerFactor.
        * PeerFactor is a new company, started by former PeerFactor employees who did not like the anti-P2P idea. They broke off to form a new pro-P2P company called PeerFactor SARL. This is the company that Ludvig is dealing with, NOT the anti-P2P PeerFactor.
        * The PeerFactor software that Ludvig is associated with is not anti-P2P software, unlike the PeerFactor program run by RetSpan in 2004, now discontinued. The head of PeerFactor states that "we do not distribute any fake file over P2P, but only useful content" (source).
        * The PeerFactor agreement does not give PeerFactor access to Torrent's source code. The only work done by Ludvig for PeerFactor consisted of the development of a single DLL which provides an implementation of BitTorrent for the PeerFactor software. Ludvig is not involved in the development of any other part of PeerFactor.
        * PeerFactor's software is going to be used to create a legal downloading service for webmasters to distribute large content more easily, as specified in the contract, nothing else.
        * Ludvig remains the only person with access to Torrent's source code. Torrent remains closed-source to prevent clones and modifications such as DHT hacks, not to conceal anti-P2P code. Torrent will not become open-source as a result of the controversy over the agreement.

Please refrain from spreading misinformation about Torrent. Should you have further concerns about the integrity of the program, please raise them in the Torrent community forums.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

rtorrent. 'nuff said.

Re:well

[bogie]

I PROMISE I'm not doing anything bad, really I do.

How naive are you?

"Torrent remains closed-source to prevent clones and modifications such as DHT hacks, not to conceal anti-P2P code. Torrent will not become open-source as a result of the controversy over the agreement."

Umm yea, those are great reasons.

Re:well

[Tyir]

VNC? The best is to ssh and use bittorent-curses with screen. Detach and reattach when neccessary.

Re:well

[NtroP]

Yeah. Windows only. GREAT alternative!

Re:well

[Cal Paterson]

Ludvig remains the only person with access to Torrent's source code. Torrent remains closed-source to prevent clones and modifications such as DHT hacks, not to conceal anti-P2P code.
Bullshit. He's keeping the code because he doesn't want to help other people build clients as good as his. DHT hacks and clones are a total smokescreen; it's already trivial to do that with other clients. Security through not realising the source code is moronic; security through obscurity obviously doesn't work for anyone (see Microsoft).

Please refrain from spreading misinformation about Torrent.
It wasn't. The grandparent said the program was closed source: it is. The grandparent said that Peerfactor was an anti-p2p company; it is. The whole "SARL" bullshit is probably some kind of puppet company; I don't trust it, or them, an inch.

Should you have further concerns about the integrity of the program, please raise them in the Torrent community forums.
Here's the most idiotic part. No one is going to discuss things where you want them. uTorrent is a suspicious program and it gonna catch hell all over the Free Software community.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

This article made me switch to utorrent.

Re:well

[jZnat]

I thought VNC was essentially what you just said (ssh -X, screen).

Re:well

[Dis*abstraction]

And for the Mac, there's Transmission, an open source Cocoa-native client that looks and feels like it was actually written by a true-blue Mac user with a sense of taste. Caveat: it doesn't support distributed tracking (yet). But for most torrents, it's the leanest, most Mac-like client out there.

Re:well

[EnronHaliburton2004]

SSH, Curses & Screen is often text. It's easy to keep a couple dozen commandline programs organized this way.

VNC is mostly used for a GUI. Many people find it hard to keep a dozen Bittorrent windows open this way.

Re:well

[rehabdoll]

.. and watch how python eats up all your ram and cpu

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Doesn't happen, Mr Bullshitter.

Re:well

[spyrochaete]

It looks like it's time to migrate to utorrent if you haven't already. There no commercialization associated with it

Unless you count the fact that the sole developer works for one of the anti-p2p companies that helped take down Suprnova, and he refuses to open the source of his client. Don't you find the desperate pleas on www.utorrent.com very suspicious? utorrent is a brilliant lightweight client but I wouldn't touch it with a 50 foot pole.

http://demodulated.blogspot.com/2006/03/we-are-not -ased.html - my blog entry on the subject

Re:well

[kennygraham]

Soon we'll start seeing posts on here from the RIAA:

Please refrain from speaking poorly of us on Slashdot. Should you have concerns about our business practices, please direct them to Hilary Rosen.

Re:well

[wqwert]

I used Azureus on a mac intel, and it performed very poorly. 30 second loads on the yonah. I strongly suggest anyone using the same set up to switch to transmission. It not only loads faster, but I've seen improved download speeds.

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

You contradict you own position between the first and second paragraphs. "It's because he wants to keep a good client to himself" vs. "It's because he's gone to the dark side".

Your post comes across as a slopy troll.

But wait there's more!! Your post sounds like thinly veiled jealousy. Are you a blue frog developer?

Re:well

[Justin205]

Link.

And another vote for rtorrent. I have it running in a (detached) screen session always, monitoring my torrents directory for new files. Sometimes I forget it's even running. :)

Re:well

[Cal Paterson]

You contradict you own position between the first and second paragraphs. "It's because he wants to keep a good client to himself" vs. "It's because he's gone to the dark side".
I don't see your reasoning here. They are two possible both reasons for keeping the source closed. It is not possible for him to percieve (wrongly, in my eyes) that there may be multiple plus points to himself of not giving source away?

But wait there's more!! Your post sounds like thinly veiled jealousy. Are you a blue frog developer?
Jealousy? Hardly. I do not currently use the Azureus client on any of my machines; however, people I live with do; it's obvious after little use that the program has a feature set far superior to any other client. I'm not about to dispute that there are technical advantages of uTorrent; it's (AFAIK) the least resource intensive Win32 client (though there are Unix clients far better in this respect).

I'm also not an Azureus developer, for the record.

Re:well

[EngMedic]

use rTorrent + screen + ssh; even faster, no graphical capaibility required.

Re:well

[Elf_h34d3r]

rtorrent for Linux!

Re:well

[tskisner]

If you are a KDE user, I highly recommend trying KTorrent (http://ktorrent.pwsp.net/). The "stable" version is ok, but I'm using the latest SVN version and it kicks butt. The DHT support even works! The next stable release should be great!

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't you find the desperate pleas on www.utorrent.com very suspicious?"

Not really, considering the alternative is to have no official statement at all. How can the very act of explaining oneself be considered suspicious?

Re:well

[Unsus]

But uTorrent is not open source. If Az is abused, people can always take the source code, make a new project, and get rid of all the bad stuff. If uTorrent adds something commercial and annoying, you're basically screwed.

Re:well

[Aladrin]

Man, I wish you could mod more than +5. This is exactly the solution I use and it's wonderful.

I see a prior poster uses a PHP-based solution, but since I also use NZBGet and NAIM on screen, I get everything together with only 1 login.

Re:well

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

WRT your blog entry, well said. There may be no fire, but there's too much smoke there for me to enter that building.

Greek Note

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW - In case you are wondering, the proper Hellenistic pronunciation is "Moo Torrent."

Re:Greek Note

[Peyna]

I always thought it was pronounced "micro-torrent."

Re:Greek Note

[Fanboy Troy]

I believe you are both right. As it is written, it would be pronounced mee-torrent in modern Greek, but I have observed that in english a mee is often pronounced moo. That pronounciation may have its roots in how it was pronounced in archaic-Greek (some letters were pronounced slightly different than in modern Greek). Anyway, whenever a mee is put in front of something else, it often is an abbreviation for 'micro'. Just as um (slashdot apperantly doesn't support Greek characters, sorry) is an abbreviation for micro-meter.

Re:Greek Note

[Neoncow]

The 'u' in utorrent is the greek small letter mu and is pronounced "mew" or "myoo".
SI uses the symbol to represent the prefix micro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu

Anyways, apparently the author pronounces it "you"-torrent. I personally prefer mu torrent.

Re:Greek Note

[Peyna]

I know what mu is, I was just pointing out that the client prides itself on being very small and therefore the mu is used to denote "micro" rather than the letter itself. At any rate, I refer to it as "you-torrent," and I pronounce mu, "myoo".

Azureus

[panxerox]

How can they go commerical if its so hard to make the program work? I even as an experianced user cant make it work.

Re:Azureus

[shudde]

I've installed Azureus on LFS, Slackware, PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu, Windows XP and I've yet to encounter a problem. While it has it's fair share of complaints (mem+cpu mostly), it's a pretty polished OSS application. Unless you're talking about Macs (which I've never tried it on), I'd say it's quite possible that you're either trolling or creating the problem yourself.

I'm hoping you've at least checked the Wiki thoroughly.

http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Pag e

Re:Azureus

[Net_fiend]

I'm going to seem like a jerk saying this, but...you don't sound like much of an 'experienced' user then. Azureus is simple to use. Its a point and click application...what *does* make a difference is if you are trying to use plugins or if you're behind a router. There is plenty of information in their FAQ if you read through their site. Really the only con to Az is that it utilizes java...which still hogs too many resources imo. I hate the orig. BT client as it has basically no options. There is no inherent 'protection'. Perhaps I'm missing something? If there are add-ons/plugins for the program, please, do inform me. Honestly I don't see what Az will gain by gong commericial. They have to know that once they do just about all the people using it will convert to something different. Unless...of course they are able to provide some sort of decent legit content along with full support. The full support will be the breaker. If people purchase a product, yet can't get help on configuring it then they will not use it or try to return it.

Re:Azureus

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry to say this, but you are not much of an experienced user then. Maybe in crack and other narcotics but surely not computing. Even the most dimwitted of my friends have been able to set up Azureus. The most help I gave was explaining to them how to find their machines own IP address so as to forward the appropriate port to their machine.

Re:Azureus

[Blakey Rat]

What he's probably referring to is the requirement to tweak all sorts of goofy values in the 10,000-page (or so it seems) and confusing-as-hell preferences screen in order to get it to get the same speeds that other bittorrent clients get by default. I have this problem as well; it seems like since my connection is 3mbps down and 768kbps up, it's somehow hosing Azureus because they're assuming your upload and download pipes are the same size... but that's just a theory. I consider myself a pretty advanced user, but I can't make heads or tails out of Azureus' complicated-as-hell prefs screen, and I certainly don't understand it well enough to make it work as well as the official Bittorrent client.

Re:Azureus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the interface has got to go (Seriously, how many levels of nested menus/options can you have?)

If they would just separate the core and the GUI as distinct projects then other could build sane interfaces.

Re:Azureus

[shudde]

I've got an unbalanced up/down as well with 1500/256. While it's not as fast as your link, I have no trouble maxxing out my connection without getting into the more esoteric options.

Transfer/Max connections per torrent: Apart from setting your ports up properly, setting up/down speed correctly and choosing a torrent with a good seeds/peers ratio this seems to be the most important thing. I set this to 200 as opposed to the default 70 or 80. While I haven't tested it, I'd imagine that higher connection numbers would increase resource drain on your system.

Re:Azureus

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but here's my point: Using the official Bittorrent client, I don't have to do any of that to get a good download speed. It just plain works with no tinkering. The ability the tinker isn't bad, but it should have sane defaults so people who just want to download things can get to it.

Re:Azureus

[Chuck Chunder]

I thought that these days Azureus had a nice wizard that asked you a few questions and set things up appropriately the first time it was run.

I first switched to Azureus when it picked up UPnP support which made it work 'magically' with my router. Setting up the firewall was the biggest bittorrent pain with other clients I tried at that time (though no doubt many of them have picked up support for UPnP now).

"Free"

[ABoerma]

So, how long before someone will start an ad-free fork?

As I commented to the same story on Digg

[DaBlade]

I'm a long time user of Azureus. I personally don't see this as a problem of any kind, as long as they keep it DRM free and isn't intrusive. As for resource usage, Azureus doesn't use a lot when ran through GNU's Java Interpreter. It's Sun's java that causes the insane resource usage. I think it would be a good idea for Aelitis to make this hollywood distribution stuff a plugin so people can delete it if they want to though.

Re:As I commented to the same story on Digg

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Azureus... it runs on Linux, it's easy, capable and I love the RSS plugin (RSSFEED). However, I'd shift from it in a flat second if someone came up with a C/C++ (or even Python) app that had the same capabilities and plugins. As you expect with anything Java related, the memory use of Azureus is just obscene. The fact that it is a long-running app makes things worse. Good as it is, it's practically an advert for not using Java.

Re:As I commented to the same story on Digg

[DaBlade]

I agree, but it's not as bad with GNU's java as it is with Sun's java. Either way, if I knew how to code, rewriting it in Python or something would be my first project.

Re:As I commented to the same story on Digg

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but it's not as bad with GNU's java as it is with Sun's java.

I tried an older version with gcj... but to be honest, gcj was slower and more memory hungry than Sun's JVM with every java app I tried. I can't try the latest version with the gcj installed in fc5 because it just spews java errors, starts, and then pops up a message box about a parser not being available.

But then, that's been my experience with gcj... hype, but doesn't work terribly well.

...a payable tracker?

[Kaioshin]

So is this just a tracker where you have to pay to download torrent files or something?

Hear hear!

[Unski]

Bram's client does what it says on the tin, so to speak, and no more. Can't ask for any more than that. Well, maybe a standard Windows file selector in the Windows client, that would be the only thing I would want to change, as at the moment (pedants please correct me) it is using the Gimp Toolkit for its UI, complete with GTK file selector. Yuck.

Still not enough to make me want to use anything else though. There may be better Windows clients, but I know that I trust the official B/T client in a way that I don't think I could trust the others.

Replace Azureus

[Rocketship Underpant]

There are numerous OS X Bit-torrent apps, but it took me a while to find one that's fast and connects to as many peers as Azureus. Transmission (http://transmission.m0k.org/) seems to be the ticket. It's simple and Cocoa-based. I'm using a recent SVN build of it. I'm glad to be rid of Azureus, with its resource hogging and its Mac-inconsistent interface.

Re:Replace Azureus

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, its a cross-platform product! It's not meant to be consistent with any particular OSes interface.
As for the complaint about resources, sounds like the OSX JVM isn't the best in the world and I'll agree with you that Azureus does use more than its fair share of resources (I run it on linux and windows) but its not really that bad. Besides, RAM is cheap and its the small price you pay for having a good product that is platform independant.

Re:Replace Azureus

[ScrewMaster]

Maybe, but it does go to show why Java's "write once run anywhere" philosophy never really took off on the desktop. I really shouldn't need to double my computer's memory to run a communications program, and while one might be tempted to think that "well, that's what it takes to run a sophisticated Torrent client" there's programs like uTorrent which provide substantially the same capabilities with a tiny fraction of the resources. Besides, when it comes to the GUI world, most people like something that is actually coded for their GUI, uses that GUI's capabilities well, and is not just an approximation. The reality is that when it comes to cross-platform functionality the communications protocols are much more important than the application, and there you do see a lot of co-operation between the various Torrent client vendors.

This does not mean advertising

[anzev]

I'm not sure if all of you just want to post ASAP or can't read but this does not mean they will bundle azureus with adware of any sorts. AFAIK, a content layer will just provide a way of getting free content (they said in TFA that they have not yet analyzed any serious payment methods so this could mean it will be free, or not). Too bad they won't let the big distributors come into play:

"Large movie studios and record labels will not be targeted for the project, as the Azureus team do not believe that they are ready yet. "You're not going to see Star Wars or Batman quite yet," joked Rohter."

So basically everybody will be allowed to make a movie, then post it on this platform, and if I will like the "genre" I will just download it... Kindof :).

Anyway, I think it's premature to judge anything until we see what they've got.

Re:This does not mean advertising

[Pop69]

"You're not going to see Star Wars or Batman quite yet,"

They must be looking on different tracker sites from me.....

Re:This does not mean advertising

[iminplaya]

Just because they're not being targeted, it doesn't they're not allowed to join. We don't want DRM. If the big boys don't like it, they can take their ball and go home. We don't need them as much as they need us, especially as more indies come online. So, if want want our business, one of the first things they'll have to do is to drop all this copy prevention nonsense. Anyway this "content layer" sounds like nothing more than a fancy new buzzword for some kind of IRC/search combination with lots of glitzy Hollywood promotions. I suppose this will lead to an Azureus "Lite" than won't eat up my bandwidth with advertising. God, the article is so full of it in some places...""We want to focus on creating a really cool, new user experience. That's our focus. If we are successful, then as a company I don't doubt that we'll be able to generate revenue to make this user experience even better." Pure boardroom BS. The kind of talk I read from this guy does not bode well. So far I like the program just fine. Luckily there are lots of alternatives, so if Azureus turns into some kind of AOL for BitTorrent, I will be chaking out those alternatives.

Azureus' source may fork here.

[Andronicus]

I think this is a bad move for the Azureus team. The need to make some money is turning the team away from building the best generalized BitTorrent implementation, so that it can become something that can generate some cash. I think that will ultimately kill it in it's new form, but it's present for may live on under new developers.

I don't mind that the team has this desire to profit from their work, they should. But this new development is unfortunate (for we users of current Azureus).

The community who has made Azureus popular has done so because the program is a really novel and effective implementation of the BitTorrent protocol for general purposes. It's supremely useful.

What they (the Azureus team) want to do with it now is very different and more narrowly defined. I don't think they understand that the audience which made their program popular is not necessarily the same (not at all the same IMHO) audience that might enjoy a P2P client with pay-per-download content.

I think many will bail to other general BitTorrent clients, and/or the source of Azureus will fork and a new crop of developers will continue to carry forward the original mission of the program: to make it the best and most portable general BitTorrent implementation.

Re:Azureus' source may fork here.

[Nasarius]

The need to make some money is turning the team away from building the best generalized BitTorrent implementation

I have to agree with that. Azureus is my favorite BitTorrent client, but it's the only OSS app I've ever used that has nag screens (granted, they're fairly rare, but still). I'd be very happy if Azureus gets forked by a group of spare-time devs who aren't looking for donations.

Good luck Azureus!

[icepick72]

As long as Azureus program continues to meet my needs, I don't have to switch. They aren't going to sell the Azureus software to end users. How the content model ends up being fiscally viable, we don't know yet. Just because something isn't open-source doesn't mean I'm searching for crappy clients to find something else. Commercialization in some respect represents the maturity and popularity of the software. I certainly don't begrudge them that. It's their baby. They can choose to open-source it and to close it. It's up to individuals whether they want to stick with it or not. But I can guarantee you that most of the off-the-cuff comments I see around here "Well, it's time to move to another" will not come to fruition. Easy to say. Tough to do.

Re:Good luck Azureus!

[MooUK]

Being commercial doesn't mean they'd have to make it closed, either.

Re:Good luck Azureus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. MySQL is comercial, and we don't have problems with that.
It's what they (will) do that counts.

'platform'=spyware

[madnuke]

Time to move to uTorrent... I liked Azureus shame how all good open source software is just made into a company now. And with that they will be more in the legal fire for illegal shareing as the media still do not know that many legal uses of bit torrent are praticed but Hollywood as just put the impresion that thousands of communist and terrorist pirates are downloading films and music destroing the world. In reality BT is the ideal way to distribute linux distros and other large files to save on bandwith.

Re:'platform'=spyware

[jZnat]

Funny how you mention Linux distros in a post recommending muTorrent. Need I remind you that muTorrent is proprietary and Windows-only? Unacceptable. There are other low-footprint (and Free) bittorrent applications out there which are cross platform.

Re:'platform'=spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other low-footprint (and Free) bittorrent applications out there which are cross platform.

Like what? Azureus? Keep dreaming, Linuxfreak. utorrent>everything else.

Going on for a long time, without ill effects

[Shade00a00]

That Azureus was being used commercially is an old story : the company Aelitis , whose members are the Azureus developpers, made an extra layer of integration to add below Azureus, to make it more efficient from a commercial standpoint.

Azureus Above All

[Anonymous Coward]

Azureus is a great piece of software. uTorrent might be functional enough, but it's no Azureus.

People need to cut the best (and free as in speech) client some slack. It might use obscene amounts of RAM but when somebody can point me to a client I can run in commandline mode that auto-updates itself, supports DHT, supports regexp scanning RSS feeds, runs on Linux, automatically queues torrents from a given directory, I might consider switching.

Heck, Azureus is worth buying another 512MB stick of RAM for, just so you can get files at a reasonable speed from a reasonably large userbase. Frankly I'm alarmed people would rather use proprietary software that is written by somebody that works with an anti-p2p company. Who knows what uTorrent has in it?

Re:Azureus Above All

[dhakbar]

The uTorrent author is not affiliated with any anti-p2p companies. In fact, the uTorrent site has a small q&a regarding that idea.

The fact remains that for 99% of Windows users, there is no client that even approaches the quality of uTorrent. Azureus is a bloated experience in both Linux and Windows, in my opinion, and for you to say it's worth it to buy another 512 MB RAM for a p2p app suggests at least a touch of zealotry.

Re:Azureus Above All

[RemovableBait]

I have to disagree with you on two points:

1. Ludvig Strigeus is associated with anti-P2P firm, PeerFactor. Whatever he says on his website about any agreements with them, the fact that muTorrent is closed-source speaks volumes in my book. I'm not saying there's anti-P2P stuff in there... I'm just saying we don't know. That doubt is enough to make paranoid me stick with something else.
2. Azureus, while it really does suck up memory and CPU cycles, it's full featured and open source. Considering that a 512MB SODIMM stick is $69, and that it will provide such a boost to other programs, I'd rather buy one than switch to muTorrent.

Re:Azureus Above All

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use Azeureus, but it kept on cutting off my internet connection even when I wasn't downloading/uploading anything. The same thing happened to me with the official BT client, so I switched to mutorrent. Haven't had nay problems with it so far, and the only thing that I'm missing from Azeureus was the nifty seeder/leecher graphic.

Re:Azureus Above All

[DarkJC]

It's really a matter of opinion. Personally? I hate Azureus, within Windows anyway. It's bloated, takes forever to load, feels sluggish, and generally to me is just average.

Re:Azureus Above All

[Elf_h34d3r]

"by Anonymous Coward"

...

Aren't the majority of these features pretty easy to implement using bash scripts?

Re:Azureus Above All

[RealityThreek]

That was probably your ISP actually. Try cutting back on the number of concurrent connections.

Re:Azureus Above All

[RealityThreek]

1. You use Windows. Or at least you would have to in order to use uTorrent anyway. So anyone who was able to use the client has no problems running closed-source code. 2. uTorrent is plenty full-featured enough for most users or even power users. I would imagine only about 1-5% of Azureus' users would find that they were lacking a feature if they switched to uTorrent. It's ridiculous to think that buying ram for a bloated app is acceptable. Especially when you consider that it uses 10s to 100s of times the cpu and memory resources. That's insane. I used Azureus forever and I have no qualms with it as a client. But I do have problems with the FUD (and yes I do mean FUD) that is spread by Azureus users about uTorrent.

Re:Azureus Above All

[RemovableBait]

So anyone who was able to use the client has no problems running closed-source code.

I would disagree with that. For one, I use Windows on my laptop for two reasons: there is limited Linux driver support for the touchpad, wireless card, media reader, and graphics card (drivers, but 3D is poor); I rely on several Windows-only programs like Flash and Dreamweaver. This doesn't stop me from running Linux on my servers at home, or preferring open source software.

Now, I said myself that Azureus is bloated. I wish they would quit using Java, but the client is open source, full featured and suits me.

muTorrent's features aside, the fact that the client is closed source and that the author has been connected to an anti-P2P firm is enough to make paranoid me stick with Azureus. Call it FUD if you like, you could say that there is FUD lurking around every single closed source program... as you're never really sure what it's up to. It's my opinion, YMMV.

As for the RAM thing, I was just pointing out that with memory so cheap these days you can afford to shell out for the performance gains. And yes, being a hardware geek I have already got 2GB in my laptop... and Azureus doesn't really make that much of a dent. Again, YMMV.

Hiring Linux sysadmin geeks in Dallas

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiring Linux sysadmin geeks in Dallas, Texas. Email your resume! [mailto]

Well, the first thing a Linux sysadmin looking for a job would do would be to try to find a website associated with the domain name in your mailto URL (like perhaps www.psfservers.net), but instead we find nothing to provide any information as to what your organization is all about... we find a login prompt only (and it doesn't even behave properly with the Firefox browser -- it caused error text to get overlayed on top of the login prompt message, creating an unreadable blob of pixel-mess). Good luck finding what you're looking for, you're gonna need it, especially if you're unwilling to publish any more descriptive info about your firm.

BT clients with RSS?

[Johnso]

Are there any good clients besides Azureus that provide RSS functionality? It's nice to be able to automatically syndicate downloads. In fact, the RSSImport plug-in for Azureus is the only reason I still use that bloatware.

Do any other BT clients offer RSS functionality?

Re:BT clients with RSS?

[cybereal]

Yes, at least one. The best Windows bittorrent client ever: http://www.utorrent.com/

It offers all of the features that Azureus supports, with a much faster slicker interface. It is of course, Windows only. I have no idea if it works on WINE. It is also very very small, a single executable file currently 154.44k (The download page doesn't even bother to zip up the exe file)

I always used azureus until I found this beauty. Everyone should give it a shot if they are on Windows.

Re:BT clients with RSS?

[gooseserbus]

Why not try one of the following:

LH-ABC or ABC_OKC

Borh of these are forks of the popular python-based open source bittorrent client ABC which runs on Linux (and is itself based on BitTornado which extended from from Original Bittorrent Core System, coded by Bram Cohen). These forks should therefore also in turn run on Linux. LH-ABC and ABC_OKC both have support for RSS.

uTorrent a very small and popular closed source Microsoft Windows based bitorrent client. Has extensive support for RSS and can be run on Linux using Wine (I don't know how successfully but I know it can and has been done).

G3 TorrentAnother open-source Python based bittorrent client the Original Bittorrent Core System, coded by Bram Cohen. It has support for RSS and runs on Linux (I think).

Rufus Another open-source Python based bittorrent client (based on G3 Torrent) with support for RSS and runs on Linux (I think).

ZipTorrent Another closed source (and supposedly small) Microsoft Windows based bitorrent client. Has support for RSS, other than that I don't know anything about it.

Your computer must fail it.

[PayPaI]

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND
ben 267 6.1 14.0 540848 127992 ?? S 6Apr06 4258:54.27 /Applications/Azureus.app/Contents/MacOS/java_swt -psn_0_1048577
After running for 23 days (and 44GB of transfers), activity monitor reports 124MB of real memory, 528MB of virtual.
Dividing the CPU time by the number of minutes it's been running yields 12.8% average CPU usage.
This is on a G4 1GHz with 896MB of ram.
I've never seen the cpu utilization issue or the window resize issue.

Re:Your computer must fail it.

[assassinator42]

What version of Java are you using?

Re:Your computer must fail it.

[PayPaI]

Java 1.4.2_09
Apple Computer, Inc.
SWT v3139, carbon
Mac OS X v10.4.6, ppc

upgrade to latest gtk+

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he should upgrade (if he hasn't already) to the latest gtk+. The file selector has been replaced with a better one.

Re:upgrade to latest gtk+

[Unski]

Maybe he should upgrade (if he hasn't already) to the latest gtk+. The file selector has been replaced with a better one.

I was talking about the Windows client, I'm sure I mentioned that repeatedly. If there are GTK+ libraries I should have installed, I don't. I know what the old file selector was like (vastly worse), but the new one still isn't great in a Windows environment. In any case, I'm sure it is unnecessary to have any separate libraries installed as at the end of the day the official B/T client for windows is just a statically-linked binary, containing it's own GTK+ libraries. Thanks for the Linux-centric advice though, it was most informative.

Congratulations Azureus!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have just become irrelevant. Long live uTorrent, at least until something better comes along.

Well...

[BishonenAngstMagnet]

I'll just have to remember to not upgrade it anymore.

Donations

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it now that they're going that route that they'll refund the donations of all of the people who donated as their money did NOT go to pay for things like this.

missing a step

[Kortec]

One would think that before they scale up, they'd make what they actually have work. From my experiance, the Azerus will go through about 3 gigs of memory in 2 hours via a nice huge memory leak under Java 1.5, and just fail abjectly under anything less. I'm not sure that I want a group that can't even implement something cleanly in Java, of all languages, to start breaking ground on anything else quite yet.

Re:missing a step

[zzatz]

I've never seen Azureus leak memory, and I run it for weeks at a time. Ubuntu 5.10, Sun JRE 1.5.0+update06, Azureus 2.4.0.2, Stuffer plugin. It does grab a hefty chunk of RAM, but that amount is stable on my system. Even for the 50GB torrent I once downloaded!

Given my non-leaky experience, I'm not convinced that the problem is with Azureus or Java. With Azureus grabbing about 0.5GB of RAM, that may be exposing leaks in your OS's VM. Or possibly the UI toolkit, which is the other thing that differs from platform to platform.

I don't doubt that you are seeing a problem. Others have similar complaints. But it just might be that Azureus and Java are stressing your system in ways that are exposing other flaws.

Re:missing a step

[chrispl]

I use an old celeron running windows with azureus and a bunch of plugins as a remote downloader. The web interface and automatic queing are huge time savers. The system's uptime is measured in weeks with Azureus running 24/7 with no slowdowns. No complaints here!

Re:missing a step

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit, Az itself cannot by default assign any more then 128MB of Java VM memory, if you have a leak in your VM, you need to update the VM, not the application running in it.

Re:missing a step

[Kortec]

I should have been more explicit. The machine I've got with that problem is far from the mean, it's an AMD X2 running Gentoo, with an XGL over lay on KDE, and heavens knows what other alpha level software I've forgotten about. In any case, I know that I'm not alone in finding that error, and that's not good. Period.

Re:Isn't this like the local...

[One Childish N00b]

No, this is like a guy who loans his van out his friends in exchange for a few beers suddenly realising that there's money to be made in setting up a self-drive hire business; they only supply you with the means of distribution, not what you deliver with it.

Please do not assume bittorrent == illegal. Much as the RIAA don't want you to know it, it's the content that counts.

Another P2P author sells out....

[BestNicksRTaken]

Great, now we're going to have adware thrown at us, our searches will be reported to the MPAA/RIAA/Sony and we "mysteriously" won't be able to download any music or video anymore.

Mind you, my ISP is TalkTalk, so I can't even download legal content (like Fedora DVD's) as they throttle it, and it seems have even found a way to block Azureus 2.4.0.2's encrypted streams - actually I think they block the tracker requests.

I'll have to have another go at hacking the encryption into launchmany-curses.py or fire up uTorrent under VMWare (anyone know if it works in WINE?)

Re:Another P2P author sells out....

[Rahu]

I haven't tried it myself(still using azureus), but i think wine 0.9.11 and higher can run uTorrent.

Re:Another P2P author sells out....

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, my ISP is TalkTalk, so I can't even download legal conten

You complain about adware yet you buy service from an ISP that sucks. I'm sensing a disconnect

Re:Another P2P author sells out....

[Anonymous Coward]

uTorrent works really well with Wine (0.9.11).

It only use about 2% cpu on my Amd 3200xp with 20 torrents running.

Windows, or Windows + JVM?

[tepples]

You don't consider Windows to have a huge memory footprint itself?

But at least the major national OEMs make and sell computers with the footprint of Windows XP or Mac OS X plus a couple apps in mind, not the footprint of Windows XP or Mac OS X + Java virtual machine + a couple apps. And like many Slashdot users, you appear to underestimate how much Windows XP can be slimmed down: turn off enough unessential services, and it's just as lean as Windows 2000 ever was.

Re:Windows, or Windows + JVM?

[ScrewMaster]

turn off enough unessential services, and it's just as lean as Windows 2000 ever was.

Yes. nLite is pretty slick in that regard.

GPL clarification

[tepples]

the fact that the GPL derives its power from copyright law is a clever hack which wouldn't be necessary if copyright didn't exist.

You're right. Some people will chime in, claiming that without copyright GPL loses its copyleft teeth and becomes equivalent to the FreeBSD license, but without copyright it also becomes lawful to make and distribute commented disassemblies of proprietary software.

Virtual PC?

[tepples]

On other systems... uTorrent running on Wine? Virtual Machine?

Do you seriously think Mac OS X + Microsoft Virtual PC + Microsoft Windows XP + uTorrent has a smaller footprint than Mac OS X + JVM + Azureus?

Azureus Dashboard Widget

[Anonymous Coward]

If you decide to run Azureus on another machine, rather than connecting with Remote Desktop, VNC, etc - try this Azureus Dashboard Widget http://www.andrewdupont.net/azureus/

Giving up your freedom is too high a price to pay.

[jbn-o]

In part, Azureus and the BitTorrent programs are attractive because they are free software—users are free to run, share, and modify the software. By contrast, uTorrent is non-free software—users can't be sure what they're really running because they can't inspect the program or get others they trust to inspect the software for them. If uTorrent doesn't do what a user wants, changes are difficult to implement (if not effectively impossible) and are not legally allowed besides. Don't think about helping your community by improving uTorrent and distributing the improved version, users can't legally do that either. Despite these restrictions, the uTorrent refers to the situation uTorrent users face as "support" in the uTorrent FAQ which frames the issue not from the perspective that users deserve software freedom, but the more narrow developmental goals of the Open Source movement which merely shrugs slightly disappointedly at proprietary software.

Apparently it takes so little to get some to give up their software freedom, even in circumstances where there are perfectly capable free software programs to do the same job.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[Anonymous Coward]

Azureus is basically java trapped. It is almost impossible to get it running without sun's java.

Bittorrent

[PenGun]

Works very well, bittorrent-console lends it'self to scripting and is very useful.

      PenGun
    Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Parent +insightful

[StarkRG]

I wish I had mod points...

Get last free version NOW before they switch? NO!

[KWTm]

A funny thing is happening with the updates.

I use Azureus but have been leery of the updates --I like to look at the changelog first rather than mindlessly clicking on the [OK to Autoupdate] button. That's why I'm still using v2.4.0.0 and ignoring the update available for v2.4.0.2.

Reading this Slashdot news today, I decided to try to autoupdate my Azureus (from Help > Check For Updates). It listed two updates with checkboxes that were available: the Core Update v2.4.0.2, and a new version of the Auto-Updater. Apparently with the new Auto-Updater, it can autoupdate automagically without giving you a chance to stop the auto update. That wasn't something I wanted --I *always* want to know when my software is changing on me-- so I unchecked the box.

And it automatically checked itself again.

Apparently I cannot choose not to update to the new automagic updater if I choose to update. The only thing I can do is not update at all and stay with 2.4.0.0 rather than 2.4.0.2.

Which got me to thinking: if I downloaded v2.4.0.2 directly (which I have already done, but I haven't installed it), would it already come built in with a way to upgrade itself to the commercial ad-driven version with no way for us to stop it?

Yeah, colour me paranoid. I'm glad it's GPL.

(And, yes, Azureus + the JVM have a huge memory footprint on my machine. Using Linux kernel 2.6.3 with Mandrake 10.0o)

uTorrent Azureus

[mriker]

I had been using Azureus for quite a long time, but recently started to look for an alternative because Azureus is such an enormous resource-hog. I wasn't optimistic; Azureus has a lot of great features that I didn't want to part with. Then I found uTorrent. It has most, if not all of the features that I loved about Azureus, and it's extremely resource-efficient. Minutes after I ran uTorrent for the first time, I was uninstalling Azureus.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[Anonymous Coward]

The technical gap here is enormous. This isn't even close to the difference between Firefox and Opera (I use Firefox); Azureus literally uses hundreds of times the resources that uTorrent does, for no additional functionality that I'd need. God, is it even skinnable?

I guess that makes me a fair-weather open source user. What can I say?

before commenting read the article

[Ilgaz]

It seems I have understood the article/news release in a very different way and it didn't seem as "spyware" "sellout" etc. to me.

Read.

BTW, I am not a "fan" of the product, I use official bittorrent for OS X to download couple of stuff I see at http://legaltorrents.com/ occasionally.

Re:before commenting read the article

[heinousjay]

I love the mentality of accusing people of selling out. It reveals a depth of thought that rivals the college student I shadowed during the DC World Bank/IMF protests of 2003, talking on her cell phone, fervently imploring that her friend not reveal to her father where she was. Fuckin brilliant.

Re:before commenting read the article

[Anonymous Coward]

It reveals a depth of thought that rivals the college student I shadowed during the DC World Bank/IMF protests of 2003, talking on her cell phone, fervently imploring that her friend not reveal to her father where she was.

Please try to stay on topic. This article is for copyright infringement confessions. Stalker confessions will have to wait.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[maxume]

Users don't give up anything when they choose uTorrent(okay, the ten minutes it takes to figure it out). They can switch away at any time, with minimal loss of anything.

The fact that other torrent clients are open source does make those clients more transparent, and therefore easier to trust, but being closed source doesn't make uTorrent impossible to trust. Also, for most users, "runs well" is a much more important selection criteria than "I can hack it". Proof of this is in the pudding, popular software often runs better than the competition and crap doesn't get users.

Summary of BitTorrent clients

[whovian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorr ent_clients

well if he knew how to do that

[daft_one]

He wouldn't need a sysadmin, now would he? ;-)

Re:well if he knew how to do that

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a sysadmint to type up a webpage.

If a tree falls....

[crhylove]

Given how bad java sucks, does it actually matter?

goodbye azureus

[Anonymous Coward]

Welp, was a good client, but thankfully there are others. I think it will someday be like trying to have an ftp client with ads...why would you want to use one with advertising when there are so many free ones available.

Ok, time to search for a new bittorrent client.

[Zangief]

Thank you very much Azureus. Good luck.

code fork!

[chocolatetrumpet]

Hopefully some bright programmers will fork the code and keep Azureus alive and updated in its current form.

you are an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

every other client is better than the original bit torrent client now.

even that bloated java piece of crap azureus.

not advertisements

[DrIdiot]

RTFA, it doesn't say anything about advertisements or banners. Think of it more like Steam (like, for Half Life) except instead of games, it's movies/other media (really, it can be any arbitrary digital media but right now they're targeting indie movies).

Re:not advertisements

[Darlantan]

Yes, because Steam doesn't advertise anything. Ever.
Steam's advertisements are just more relevent, in that they're at least games. That doesn't mean that I really want to see them. When I'm using BT, I _always_ know what I'm after to begin with. I don't want to see anything unrelated to what I'm going after.

Also, I made another post, in reply to my original one, since I felt that it perhaps gave the impression that I really hadn't RTFA'd. How 'bout you read the replies, huh?

Re:not advertisements

[DrIdiot]

Just because I used Steam to explain the concept doesn't mean they're the exact same thing. Steam advertisements tend to be scarce and they're all concentrated in one area or come up as a one-time pop up. Steam is proprietary software whereas Azureus is licensed under the GPL, so even if advertisements/other undesirables appear, you can just start a new fork without them and just change the name. Since they didn't explicitly say there would be advertisements, you can't go on a limb and assert that they WILL be there. I think the motives and goals of the people at Valve and the developers of Azureus are quite different.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[squidsuk]

Non-free software is never trustworthy. Even if it does not contain anything nasty now, it may do so at any point, and it's not trivial (reverse-engineering required) to detect when it does so.

All users benefit from free software, whether or not they intend to hack the software themselves, just as all citizens benefit from free speech whether or not they intend to demonstrate outside Parliament themselves.

The reason there are multiple trustworthy torrent clients to switch to is because those clients are open-source, and the existence of such alternatives is what keeps closed-source equivalents "honest" to some extent - but make no mistake about it, non-free software always reduces our freedom, it is intrinsic to the nature of non-free software.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[Sairret]

For a long while, I used Azureus. Then I tried out uTorrent. I found uTorrent to be superior software by far. Guess which client I use now.

Open source is great, but I'm not going to use inferior software so I can feel a little warm and fuzzy. I'm going to use the one that works.

uTorrent

[Sheepdot]

I started using Azereus despite the Java crap because it was the only one that used UDP or TCP NAT hole punching (or whatever they call it) so I didn't have to open up any ports. I've since found uTorrent, which is closed source, but I can actually play games while it runs in the background and if they start packaging spyware with their client, I'll just move on to the next one.

Don't ever feel obligated to stick to doing one thing. I suppose that's part of the reason why I go to Digg for my news first now anyway.

Above the radar-Behind the back.

[Anonymous Coward]

"They don't have to offer anything period, legitimate nor otherwise."

[From the FAQ]
"Azureus has a built in tracker to allow users to share torrents directly, rather than uploading them to an "external" tracker. This is called "hosting" and can be performed by selecting this option from the context menu on the "My Torrents" view."

My my, no central tracker for the "legitimate" copyright holder to target.

"For different reasons, you may want to prevent access to your computer to certain lists of IPs."

Tsk, tsk. Keeps them pesky "legitimate" copyright holders out of the works.

"Access to the tracker web pages and the tracker announce process can be controlled by password settings specified on the Tracker configuration panel. This supports basic authentication and as such the user name and password values are transmitted in plain text. This can further be protected by using SSL (below). Note that password protecting the tracker announce process requires a BitTorrent client capable of handling authentication, such as Azureus. Communication with the tracker can be encrypted using SSL, again this requires a suitable client such as Azureus."

Now that's no way to treat the "legitimate" copyright holder.

"The following encapsulation protocol is designed to provide a completely random-looking header and (optionally) payload to avoid passive protocol identification and traffic shaping. When it is used with the stronger encryption mode (RC4) it also provides reasonable security for the encapsulated content against passive eavesdroppers."

Uh, oh. Hide and go seek with "legitimate" content.

Re:Above the radar-Behind the back.

[rolfwind]

You are assuming that in all cases:

a) The person seeding the file isn't the legitimate copyright holder, and, strangely enough, many times they are. How else will you share crappy self-made movies with friends over the net?

b) The content doesn't have a "free" license - Linux ISOs, etcetera - which is also a normal occurence.

c) These features are built in to subvert copyright holders rather than protect the privacy of the sharer. Strangely enough, people may want to share things they made with privacy in tact. Like writing under a pseudonym.

The logical fallacy was begging the question, iow, assuming what you are trying to prove and making a circular argument.

Re:Above the radar-Behind the back.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that the transfer of "legitimate" content needs to be as transparent as possible.* No hiding the content. No hiding of the transferer. As long as all those means are in place, the argument that P2P is for the transfer of "legitimate" content will look weak.

*And in case you all haven't figured it out by now. Legitimate content doesn't need all that stuff. The ONLY part of your argument that's valid is privacy, but for most using that excuse is like the Bush administration using "national secrets" even though we all know it doesn't apply.

The problem is not Java

[dwalsh]

Azureus is not a 100% pure Java app. It uses SWT - IBMs embrace & extend for Java. SWT uses native peers, but it does not render well on other platforms (i.e. other than Windows).

If Azureus used Swing, it would render aswell, or as badly, on OSX as everything else.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[maxume]

Sure, non free software is never absolutely trustworthy, but if 10 million people are using it, that's good enough for me. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is. "I can see the source" is not the singular way to build trust. I already copped to open source software being easier to trust.

The other point I was reaching for was that if the benefits of using closed(non free, whatever) software outweigh the benefits I derive from the community you speak of(they often do), then the rational thing to do(assuming I don't place a large intrinsic value on software-libre itself) is to use the closed software.

If the choice is between exactly equivalent software except that one is open and one is closed, open is clearly the better choice. For software that isn't exactly equivalent, the choice is less clear; I'm not sure exactly how much my 'software freedom' is worth. My behavior suggests that I don't place too high a value on it.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[timelessroguestar]

Have you ever tried running uTorrent on older hardware? For that matter have you ever tried running Azureus on older hardware? The former uses at most 4% of my modest 1.2GHz processor, while the later uses at least 40% at any half decent speed (say 40KB/sec up and 80 KB down). I don't know about you, but when I have a BT client open, I expect to be able to do something other than let it suck up all my cycles.

I like OSS as much as anyone else but let's judge software on its ability to do the job and its functionality, shall we? Any BT client that uses less processing power than a half-decent firewall is commendable IMO. I trust a developer that can write a good client and appease the user community more than OSS developers and its community deluded about how good their client is. Surely it must be my computer's fault that it is old hardware and cannot handle the BT protocol and traffic.

When I used to use Azureus it basically put my computer to a stand-still as far as doing anything else. Ever since I switched from Azureus to uTorrent, I never looked back. I can do anything else that my computer is able to do; including playing the most demanding games my computer can handle. That's the whole point of uTorrent. I don't think any other client beats it on any performance metric.

RTFA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, Slashdotters, we have a common case of someone assuming something WITHOUT RTFAing.
There is no mention of ads on the client, it only says that it will allow people to see other torrents they can add if they choose to use the new layer.

Re:Isn't this like the local...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I'm not assuming anything. I'm making inferences based on experience. Apart from one file I've never heard of anyone I know ever downloading anything from bit torrent that wasn't illegal and people who deny that this is its primary (and secondary and tertiary) function are either deluded or liars.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is that uTorrent is automatically evil because it is not FOSS? If I write a program that can kill nuns working in orphanages in africa (who cares how) then you and all other people who get all squishy in their panties about having source code will probably worship at my feet. Don't bother to deny it, because that is exactly the sort of mentality that comes with that way of thinking. It has not become an issue of who has the better software, it has become a dogma.

Besides who the hell in their right mind uses Azureus anyway? I tried it once until I noticed that it was using 60 megs of memory while idle and while torrents were running it was constantly thrashing my hard disk. uTorrent runs in abou 7 megs of memory space and can somehow manage to move huge amounts of data both upstream and downstream with only the smallest amount of disk activity.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[Splintax]

I wouldn't say it's trivial to find "nasty stuff" in an open-source client, either.

Sure, it may be easier - but how many people out of those who use Azureus are able to comprehend all of the code that goes into it? And how many of those people re-read the code upon every new release?

Re:uTorrent Azureus

[level_headed_midwest]

Azureus is a Java program and the Java Runtime Environment is a resource hog. But, it does allow Aelitis to write one version and offer it for a multitude of different OSes. Otherwise I bet it would be Windows-only and that would suck.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[gad_zuki!]

>users are free to run, share, and modify the software.

How many people even modify Azareus? Hell, why are they always begging for money when most OSS projects seem to do well without? OSS is nice when it works and produces a good product but its ugly as sin when it produces a bloaty java app and evangelists badmouth a decent closed alternative for the sake of ideology. Not to mention sticking to AZ for the sake of OSS steals thunder from other OSS projects and might be a disincentive to start a new one.

Typical Slashdot response

[petrus4]

Whenever it's learned on here that someone wants to actually get paid for what they do, they're immediately branded as the spawn of Satan.

I dislike a lot of what corporations do as much as the next person, but do we really need this kneejerk response that anybody who wants to make *any* money at all is declared soulless, ravening evil?

People need to eat, and they generally also want to do a lot of other things...and last I checked, food and most of said other things usually cost money. That has to come from somewhere, and what I really think is wrong is the idea that the only morally legitimate means of earning it is sitting in a cubicle like a battery chicken for eight (or however many more) hours a day.

If you're going to come back at me with the "donation" response as well, don't bother. I'm aware that the only real reason why 98% of the readership of this site believe that making money from software is evil is because Richard Stallman said so...not because they themselves actually have a reason for said belief.

Yes, the corporate rampage in a lot of different areas is a problem...but kneejerk, mindless Communism is too. They're both extremes, and they're both equally undesirable. RMS is as much a destructive fanatic in his own way as Gates or Ballmer are in theirs. Both sides want to remake the world in *their* own image, and to hell with what anybody else wants.

A lot of people here pride themselves on being intellectuals...but sometimes, some of you really don't act like it.

Re:Typical Slashdot response

[Scarblac]

I'm aware that the only real reason why 98% of the readership of this site believe that making money from software is evil is because Richard Stallman said so...not because they themselves actually have a reason for said belief.

Eh? RMS would never say such a thing, he's not opposed to making money.

The reason 98% of the readership here believes making money is evil, is that they like getting things for free. Nothing special.

Re:Typical Slashdot response

[Castar]

Whenever it's learned on here that someone wants to actually get paid for what they do, they're immediately branded as the spawn of Satan.

It's not that they want to make money for what they do. In this case, they're switching to an advertising model. Advertising, by its nature, will make this a worse platform for its users - not just because of annoying banner ads or whatever, but because it twists the relationship. No longer is this about software selling a service to users, it's now about software selling users to advertisers. So the important thing is no longer the software, it's the userbase. A decision that would improve the usability of the platform but hurt the advertising won't happen, and the users suffer.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[boojit]

I run Azureus exclusively on a 400Mhz PII-class celeron; it runs just fine with no obscene CPU usage (definitely nothing like the 40% you quote). I regularly get download speeds in excess of 600KB/s with no CPU or memory issues whatsoever. Are you running an older JRE? Older JREs don't play well with Azureus and are known to cause CPU-hogging issues, among other things.

--booj

Honest Question

[StarKruzr]

Why do you give a shit about the copyrights of the members of the ??AA?

The indie movies and music thing is a step...

[LupusCanis]

in the right direction, IMO, it'll mean that there'll be some legal BT content out there, which, quite frankly, is almost non-existant atm. However, once it starts advertising larger companies, with copyrights ... bad news.

Limit connections to hosts with ipfilter.dat

[gr8dude]

Can somebody recommend a client for Linux that allows me to limit the range of IP addresses to which the client can establish connections [using the rules written in an ipfilter.dat, or something similar].

Non-Java please. I've been looking for such a client, but still failed to find one. Any tips will be appreciated.

Re:Limit connections to hosts with ipfilter.dat

[joto]

There's a tool called iptables to do that. You don't need no stinkin' fancy client...

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 6881:6889 \
--src-range 192.168.3.6-192-168.3.91 -j DROP
sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 6881:6889 \
--dst-range 192.168.3.6-192.168.3.91 -j DROP

Make a perl script to read the IP addresses out of your ipfilter.dat (or something similar)

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[squidsuk]

Quote:

"I can see the source" is not the singular way to build trust.

It's not only, or even particularly, that you personally can see the source, though that comes along with it. That's a common misconception - what would I do with the source anyway, many/most people say quite understandably. Yet that's missing the point, which is threefold:

• If it's not widely used, then only a few people can ever be affected by anything nasty in it anyway
• If it is widely used, then some subset of those who get it also retrieve and work with the source, and it will be forked if there's anything wrong with it - not only anything malicious but even if it's just taken in a misguided direction
• Not only is this the case, but the developers of the project know it as well, which is why open source projects have such a good record for staying on track and being run as benevolent dictatorships, without any overarching formal arrangements or discipline. That's because project maintainers know full well that the moment they stop being benevolent dictators, the project will fork and they will be maintaining the deprecated fork

Quote:

The other point I was reaching for was that if the benefits of using closed(non free, whatever) software outweigh the benefits I derive from the community you speak of(they often do), then the rational thing to do(assuming I don't place a large intrinsic value on software-libre itself) is to use the closed software.

That's also quite common, and if I may say so, quite short-sighted as well. The analogy to free speech is quite apt, as many people place similarly little intrinsic value on traditional liberties they have taken for granted, being willing, even eager, to give up freedoms and accept the extension of government powers (arrest, detention, trial, national identity, expression, etc, etc) in the name of fighting terrorism, pornography, efficiency, or whatever other excuse is flavour of the day.

Those people won't squawk until their freedom is gone, and it's far too late then. It is just the same with software, and that's why some of us, such as Richard Stallman, myself, and many more, bang on and on about free/libre software being important, even to the extent of eschewing non-free software however technically capable it may be.

Non-free software is a trap, however tempting the bait may be, and frequently the only thing that keeps non-free software honest is the existence of an escape route in the form of free alternatives, preventing the trap from fully closing. How much better to take the escape route first? Contrariwise, every user that goes to closed-source weakens the free alternative, reducing the open community, and bringing nearer the extinction of that escape route.

When it's gone, recovering the freedom you once had is extremely difficult, requiring toil, tears, sweat, and blood - just as recovering political freedoms once lost is a desperately uphill battle.

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[maxume]

First, thank you for your thougtful and rational reply, there isn't enough of that going around.

Moving in a more practical direction, rather than what if's, I use Bloglines. There are free software alternatives, but none that somebody else manages, which is a huge feature, it just works. I can export my subscription list in a standard format any time I want. Why shouldn't I use bloglines?

Re:Giving up your freedom is too high a price to p

[squidsuk]

From what I can see of it, Bloglines is not only software, but are also providing web services, which means that additional considerations apply, whether or not source code for the application is available.

For a conventional downloaded application that you then use directly on your own computer, the argument is fairly well worked out and easy to make, for example choosing to use a free/libre torrent client rather uTorrent, OpenOffice rather than MS-Office, ClamAV rather than Antivir, etc, etc.

It is not only about the practical drawbacks that directly affect you, such things as what it might actually be doing "under the covers", what happens if the vendor discontinues it or unilaterally changes the terms, pricing, etc, with the next version/security upgrade, and all the usual arguments on those lines. Your use of closed-source applications also has a wider impact on everyone:

• By increasing the user-base of the closed-source application, you also weaken the open alternatives, which may be the only competition acting to keep the closed application on honest terms - when there is only the closed application and no alternative, you will start seeing ever more onerous terms, prices, and conditions, and there won't be anywhere else to turn, as has been the case with MS-Windows and Office
• If proprietary formats for data are required and not interoperable, then you may force others to use the same closed-source applications, whether or not they want to. Again, the existence of open-source alternatives with a reasonable userbase may be the only thing forcing interoperability, for example with the way that the rise of Firefox usage has forced rethinks of Explorer-specific websites
• By decreasing the user-base of open alternatives, you are reducing their rate of advancement - the bigger the userbase, the more the contributions, requests for enhancements, developers, and so on. If you would (in principle) prefer an open-source solution, but available open alternatives need to improve to exceed existing closed-source applications, then the way to get it is to use the open-source alternative, if it's at least "good enough", and help it to improve. Going to the closed-source option instead just helps shore that up, an obstacle to ever getting a really good free/libre alternative.

When it comes to web services, other considerations impact. By signing up to the site, you are probably entering into some sort of ongoing contract, rather different to buying a product. Though I note that the desire of software vendors to transfer to a rental/subscription model rather than the sale of an instance of a copy of the software is one of the drawbacks of conventional closed-source applications.

Going back to Bloglines for a moment, one notices that while they use free/open source software to provide web applications, they also impose conditions on their web services that would not be acceptable for a free/libre application. For example:

Terms of Use
Bloglines Web Services are freely available for non-commercial use only (at home or at work), and are subject to our Terms of Service. You may not automatically re-publish content from these feeds on a commercial website. All services require an existing Bloglines account. We reserve the right to disable access to external applications and accounts at any time.

Terms like that would make a conventional stand-alone application non-free, even if the source code was available, and using web services to impose conditions like that on applications built on top of free/libre software is part of what's intended to be addressed by changes to the GPL in version 3.

The point being that we wish to preserve a fundamental set of freedoms for users of software (however the application is delivered) as follows:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source c