BitTorrent Inc. compra µTorrent

Bem, eu não esperava essa. Claro que o Ludde sempre teve interesse em vender o µTorrent e sempre se mostrou muito protetivo em relação ao código, mas não achei que a BitTorrent fosse comprar o programa, até porque o Bram Cohen sempre fica na defensiva quanto às qualidades do cliente oficial (que é uma porcaria). Não sei até que ponto o µTorrent vai mudar para acomodar os planos da BitTorrent Inc. (já há uma flag nova implementada, que permite incrementar ou diminuir a prioridade dos pacotes referentes a torrents específicos - o que explica o posicionamento contrário do Cohen à defesa da neutralidade da rede). Dependendo do que acontecer, vamos ter que voltar para o Azureus ou partir para algum cliente novo. Tomara que alguém competente decida dar um fork no Azureus (por causa dessa coisa horrível do Zudeo), e faça um cliente livre decente.

[quote]This is Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, the writer of µTorrent.

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent'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.

What does this mean for the µTorrent community? Not much, at least not at first. The intention is to maintain the website as it is, and keep the forums and community active. Moving forward behind the scenes, we will continue to develop µTorrent and will be using the codebase in other applications, especially ones where a fast, lightweight implementation is more suitable, such as embedded systems on TVs, cell phones, and other non-PC platforms.

The existent µTorrent and BitTorrent communities are immensely valuable to us, which is why we are announcing this here first to make sure you're all the first to know about the news. The plan is to continue to foster the health and growth of the community that has been critical to the success of µTorrent. Thank you in advance for your support.

Bram and Ludde[/quote]

Fonte

Fiquei tão puto com isso que me registrei no fórum só para postar a seguinte mensagem. É mais um desabafo do que qualquer outra coisa:

[quote]This is also my first and last post on this forum. I've registered just to post this.

Ludde, of course, does not owe me or any of us users anything. He provided us with a good, light, efficient torrent client that is probably the best one around. He's always been very protective of his code, and that bothered me a little, but still, the program is terrific and I welcomed it and used it with no reservations.

The same goes for Bram Cohen. He created BitTorrent, a wonderful technology. Whereas I have absolutely nothing nasty to say about Ludde, I don't feel the same way about Bram. In interviews, he always comes off as an extremely unpleasant, arrogant person, riding on his Asperger's power trip pretending he's such the boy whiz. I could forgive that if it were not for his dealings with this sad, abusive content industry we have to struggle with nowadays, be it regarding intellectual property maximalist agendas that do immense damage to consumers and the public good, be it regarding the absolutely crap content that they've been shitting out for a while.

Both Ludde and Bram do not owe me anything. Yet, I feel sad, betrayed, and disappointed in myself for being so naïve. For once believing they were siding with the good guys...that they were striving for something more important than money, that they believed in the power of the disruptive technologies they created to actually disrupt the old industrial forces in content production. I guess I have too much faith in people...

While I salute the initiative to pursue new business models, making a deal with the MPAA is certainly not the way to do it. There will be no innovation, just the same old business models transplanted to the Internet, with a few quirks here and there, backed up by strongly unequal IP laws, which in turn seek to sustain the artificial scarcity of digital content. I should have seen it coming as soon as Bram started arguing against net neutrality...

This is very, very sad, Ludde, this ruining of a beautiful thing. I hate to call anyone a sell out, but hey, you deseve it. I'm not going to name call Bram, since he's beyond any help, but shame on you, Ludde. Hope you buy yourself something nice.

It's back to Azureus for me, hoping that someone forks the damn code and removes Zudeo.[/quote]