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Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent
Anon E. Muss writes "Microsoft has a new Secure Content Downloader tool that sounds an awful lot like a Bittorrent clone. It's described as a 'peer-assisted technology' where '[e]ach client downloads content by exchanging parts of the file they're interested in with other clients, in addition to downloading parts from the server.' Right now MSCD is just a time-limited preview, intended to support downloads of select Microsoft beta releases (e.g. Visual Studio 2008). If this test goes well, Microsoft will probably start using MSCD for all their large downloads. How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"
Bittorrent may not have invented P2P, but this new Microsoft Secure Content Downloader appears to have directly copied the Bittorrent model of P2P. It has an index file with chunk hashes, a central file server (tracker) and you automatically seed to other clients in the "cloud" (swarm). The main difference (as far as I can tell from the few details they give) seems to be that the tracker also functions as a seed, something easily done with Bittorrent as well.
The point of the article is to point out that Microsoft is yet again ignoring a perfectly fine, widely accepted and used technology, choosing instead to invent their own version with no obvious benefits. Microsoft's endemic NIH syndrome harms the user by taking developer time away from fixing bugs and adding useful features, and by reducing interoperability.
1. Steal an idea.
2. Use it.3. Patent it (so no onelelse can use it, INCLUDING the one you stole it from!
4. Profit!