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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.
Let's hope it's not the end of a perfectly fine BT client. Maybe I've lived long enough with the embrace, extend, extingush thing, but this doesn't feel that good :(
Bram and Ludde are answering questions on #utorrent-questions -- irc.p2p-network.net
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
... 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.
So why worry? If you keep the build you have right now I doubt it'll be incompatible with torrents any time soon. What I have right now does the job fine, and I don't really need any new features.
Reminds me of the time when Microsoft couldn't compete with another x86 assembler on the market. They bought it out, and rather than use it to replace the relatively awful MASM, killed it instead.
Will uTorrent face the same fate? Can we all make money by writing a better BT than BT and taking money for it afterwards now?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Ladies and gentleman, maybe it's time you start archiving all the current and future version of uTorrent incase they decide to implement "features" you don't want. Having a copy sit somewhere on CD isn't a bad idea anyway. I have personally tried uTorrent and don't like it, and went back to Azureus. Mainly because I have gotten too used to the interface, and it's open-source project so I know what I`m getting.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If you need all the features of Azureus there's nothing else that can match it.
On the other hand, uTorrent does just about every damn thing most people need and it does it in 1/10th the CPU usage and 1/100th the memory usage of Azureus.
I like never having to worry about whether my torrent program is running in the background while I'm doing foreground tasks so I love uTorrent. I just leave it on all the time, running away, and never even notice it while I'm playing NWN2 or editing photos or watching videos or whatever. And that's the big win.
Shut down the uTorrent central server, and you've effectively halved (or worse) everyone's download/upload speed.
It's a serious problem; if it happens there could be an alternate server, but it would require third party hacks.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
http://digg.com/tech_news/BitTorrent_merges_with_u Torrent
Some answers from #uTorrent-questions:
-will uTorrent be ported to Linux?
probably
-how many lines of code is it comprised of?
~50-60K
-will encryption be removed?
no (answered by Bram)
-features most important to you (directed @ Bram)
low memory footprint, code size, cpu usage
-is there any thoughts to an osx client?
(Bram) we plan to produce an up to date osx client, but that's significant porting work
-are there any features that will be removed from uTorrent?
(Bram) we're leaving the uTorrent client mostly alone for now, on the grounds that people like it (further defined 'mostly' as in, not much of anything substantive will change)
-will uTorrent be replacing the original python client?
(Bram) we aren't announcing integration plan details right now
-Bram, are you talking with asus and other router makers for putting uTorent in there?
(Bram) we're talking to lots of people
-will uTorrent ever be open-sourced?
(Bram) not in the forseeable future, but we'll continue to maintain an open source reference implementation
-Bram, you said before that you're not a big fan of protocol header encryption... do you still stand behind this?
(Bram) it isn't much harder for an isp to recognize encrypted headers than unencrypted headers.
-will content be monitored?
(Bram) absolutly not
-does the uTorrent codebase compile on linux today (in your labs?)
(ludde) No
-ludde can't develop anything new for uTorrent?
(ludde) bittorrent inc will do the majority of the development work
-what IDE was uTorrent developed on?
(ludde) Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 with a few routines written in visual cobol. uTorrent was written in C++ with some tiny chunks of assembly
-will uTorrent continue to be free?
(Bram) utorrent will continue to be available and continue to be free (as in, no cost, not open source)
-Utorrent uses a lot of Windows API's right? Won't that be a problem when porting to *nux/OSX
(ludde) Yes, the UI is tightly bound to Windows APis, however, the core backend is easier to port.
(Bram) the utorrent UI is windows native, so porting that part to osx or linux is a significant amount of work (but planned to be done at some point)
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.
...don't forget to turn off the auto update feature, if it has one. I used to use uTorrent before switching over to linux, and I don't remember if it has an auto-updater like some other clients do.
uTorrent was written by one guy by the name of Ludvig Strigeus, not some random dudes. He's Swedish, I think. One of the sharper coders on the planet, I'd say. Anyway, he never wanted to release the source because ... he didn't want to release the source. No particular reason why he should have, really. This idea that every programmer that does something way cool somehow owes the community his source code is just silly. He gave away a hot product for free, that's good enough for me.
Not that I wouldn't mind taking a look at that codebase. You know, just for curiosity's sake.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
prior to this uTorrent ate nanoTorrent which ate picoTorrent, only moments after femtoTorrent was devoured. we must stop this before there is just one giant torrent walking this earth, devouring everything in its path!
have you ever tried playing games in the background with Azureus open? With uTorrent you can play nearly any game with no noticeable performance penalty unless it's a hard drive happy game. uTorrent is so efficient that it uses fewer CPU cycles than my application firewall, that's impressive.
Timeless Rogue Star - Defile Convention - Transcend Time, Life, the Universe, and Everything.