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

[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.

"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?"

[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.

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.

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.

Fork.

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

The client is open source, no?

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.

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

[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

[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

[EngMedic]

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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?

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

[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.