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BitTorrent, Inc. Acquires uTorrent
ColinPL writes "BitTorrent, Inc. has taken the next step — the acquisition of uTorrent. In a joint announcement made today, the two firms have publicly solidified the merger. 'Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and uTorrent AB have decided to join forces ... BitTorrent has acquired uTorrent as it recognized the merits of uTorrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together uTorrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.'"
With Cohen walking hand in hand with the MPAA nowadays, how will this affect the privacy of current Torrent users such as myself? I have to admit I'm a bit worried. It doesn't come as a big surprise though. Torrent's excellent code and features make for one of the best clients available right now.
... I'd like to turn this into an "Ask Slasdot". Which client should I use, are there any good GPL clients or promissiong projects?
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
By default torrent includes a list of torrent search engines. It's as if the developers are encouraging piracy rather than hiding behind the pretense that people can use the software for legitimate stuff. I reckon most bittorrent users, like me, use the protocol and their favorite client way more often for pirating music, movies, and porn than for downloading legitimate stuff.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Disclaimer: I'm the guy that wrote TorrentSpy (the application, not the web site) and have contributed a small amount of code to the Python/core BT client and tracker. I haven't written any code for BT in a while, nor have I chatted with Bram in literally years, but ...
... but he also gets something he can brandish at anyone who wants to throw money at BT.
From what I remember, Bram always viewed the Python/core as a sort of "reference implementation" -- it was never his goal to make the Python client or tracker the end-all be-all.
Why is it then surprising that he'd want to bring on a client that doesn't have to be Open Source, and thus doesn't have to be clean and perfect, but is still sexy as hell? He still keeps his reference implementation that supports the features and is easy to reimplement a dozen times in two dozen languages
Remember that his goal since incorporating has been to legitimize and broaden the adoption of BT. A sexy client is a huge step towards that goal. It's not like Sony or the MPAA or whomever is going to distribute a customized version of Azureus any time soon -- it's a beast! But a custom version of uTorrent? A 1MB executable that you could throw on a CD that requires zero install? YTF not? Remember also that Strigeus has been working towards licensing out the core engine for uTorrent.
Plate. Shrimp. Plate of Shrimp.
Some of you are excessively paranoid. You know that, right?
(Yes, yes, I know: "Welcome to Slashdot".)
Reading some of the comments in here and from people chatting in the IRC channels linked from a previous comment, I see many people are worried about this. In one corner we have Bram Cohen, a man which designed the bittorrent protocol and provided an open source, multiplatform, reference implementation of it. He also has a website that linked to illegal content, apparently, and made a deal with the MPAA so it would comply with the law (DMCA). Else, he could have been sued and lose a lot of money, I understand. On the opposite corner we have the utorrent author, someone who is apparently a good programmer that provided a free, non open source client, which is tiny, featureful and runs very well under its platform, which is Windows.
Now, when I read people saying they don't trust (sic) Bram Cohen and that they will no longer update utorrent, or that this will be a bad thing, I don't really understand why they are worried. Is it for technical reasons? Do you fear utorrent will stop being tiny _if_ it's made multiplatform? What motivates that fear? Something from the past that I missed? Or is it because of the deal between Cohen and the MPAA? If so, why do you consider it bad? Do you fear the bittorrent protocol and official implementation will suffer because of that deal and that same situation will extend to utorrent? Honest questions, really. Please, englighten me.
I've got part swallowed-by-the-evil-empire and part they'll-fix-it-til-its-broke feelings about this. utorrent was the only client that really gave me what I wanted. The trouble with perfection is that from the top you can only go down.
uTorrent phones home for the DHT network feature; it's pretty important if you care about speed.
Shut down the uTorrent central server, and you've effectively halved (or worse) everyone's download/upload speed.
Not quite. It uses router.utorrent.com to bootstrap into the DHT network. But if it already has known nodes (e.g. saved from the previous session) then it wouldn't 'phone home' as you call it. The whole purpose of the Kademlia DHT feature is to be decentralized, i.e. without the need for a central server. Granted, utorrent is closed-source, so we can't tell exactly how it uses router.utorrent.com, but that is how all the open-source clients that I know of do things.