BitTorrent: Now Closed Source

[starcraft.man]

I doubt that, i think azureus is the torrent client that has a more users base. Not to say that its far more advanced

Maybe not, I don't have rock solid belief in any numbers anyway. At worst, uTorrent represents a significant portion of p2p user traffic. I know on almost all my torrents around 60% are uTorrent (most of rest are azureus and a small portion other), that could just be random luck though.

Many peopel saw this coming when bittorrent signed deals with the mpaa. I can't say its a suprise to me but I am very disapointed. I think we will see some of the other major torrent clients band together and start implementing their own code amongest themself where the free bittorrent protocal left off. Either that or a totaly new form of p2p app.

I would definitely support this any way I could. Perhaps it should have already been done by now anyway.

[Dimitriid]

Whats the worry? Can they legally "close" old software that was previously open? I'd be pretty stupid to go around basically saying "you are legally obligated to forget everything you know"

Reminds me of the "indian giver" bets on Seinfeld.

[Jordanwb]

Sorry but I don't understand what this topic is talking about.

[BW~Merlin]

Sorry but I don't understand what this topic is talking about.

What is there not to understand? Like the topic says bittorrent is now closed source. Your post is pointless. If you don't understand something specific like why or what then say that instead of I just don't understand.

[Jordanwb]

Very well; I don't understand what the problem is with Utorrent being closed sourced. What's the big deal?

[hanzomon4]

What is there not to understand? Like the topic says bittorrent is now closed source. Your post is pointless. If you don't understand something specific like why or what then say that instead of I just don't understand.

Well you don't have to be an *** about it.... If you think the question is stupid just ignore it.

[Jordanwb]

Thank You hanzo.

[~LoKe]

What's illegitimate about piracy? =P

Are you hellbent on starting this argument in every damn thread?

[starcraft.man]

Very well; I don't understand what the problem is with Utorrent being closed sourced. What's the big deal?

Ok... I thought I explained that in the first post. It's not any one thing, it's a whole slew of them. The first thing is that Bit Torrent (at least way I see it) has always been about openness and sharing (both in code and in purpose), this of course flies in the face of that by being closed (client completely, and new protocols to whatever degree they make it difficult to get).

To add to that, the fact that they adopted a Windows only client as their mainline (with apparently no design/rush for cross platform at this time it appears) is a direct snub to all the non-Windows folks. Granted, not so many Mac and Linux folks use the main client, that isn't the point though. The point is that the main client is supposed to (at least as I see it) be the flagship, the example, by which other clients should be. Lead by example and all that, which this doesn't seem to be in my eyes.

So that's about it, I just think the main client should represent the openness/sharing of the technology. You of course might not care one lick about it being open/closed (just about torrenting), but I (and other's here) do care about the openness of software (we use FLOSS daily after all). It's one of the most important parts of Linux...

Oh and to another extent you might add how Bram (originator of bittorrent) signed the deal with the MPAA not so long ago and has turned the main page into a site that's aiming to commercialize bittorrent... whether that furthers the aims of closed along I dunno. It simply doesn't feel right to me at all >.>.

[LookTJ]

I think it's time to fork BitTorrent and call it OpenBitTorrent?