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PacoBell

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  1. I have, thank you very much. Now this is interesting. So code-reuse, the basic tenent of OOP, automatically brands any project pedestrian? I know a lot of developers who would take offense at that remark. With one statement you single-handedly discounted all the innovative features to date that the many developers worldwide have implemented, not only into their own clients, but that have been merged back into the main source tree. Do you consider musicians who sample other's work for their own creations to be hopelessly derivative as well? If you must know, I downloaded �Torrent from within eMule. The bits were no longer his. Of course he has the right to keep the source to himself, but not for the reasons he mentioned in his interviews and on these forums. The modification of �Torrent is inevitable regardless of the source being readily available or not. Consider it forked. I do, but not restricted to its current form. We shall see who's vision ultimately wins the hearts and minds of the public. The funny thing about "vision", or any meme for that matter, is that it is highly transmissible, contagious even. It cannot be locked down by any one person. Vision is given power because it is shared by many other people. Therefore, whether the founders are present becomes irrelevant because the project has already gained a momentum. It is a necessary evil and one that is completely orthogonal to the open source nature of the project. Harm would have come from another vector sooner or later. But the innovation that has sprung from the project's collective intelligence has allowed us to rapidly formulate defenses against that harm. Now, do you have any more red herrings? Oh, right, circle the wagons. It doesn't matter what happens to the rest of the network as long as �Torrent is keeping the straight and narrow. Gotcha. except not adding it to your client. This stance is myopic at best and evasive at worst. You're content to allow leechers to freely drain the network while you sit back and watch it all happen. I'm glad you're not responsible for the security of my system. You really are good at spin, aren't you? No, this is not many minds, it is mine and mine alone. If others happen to adopt my methodology, so be it. Again, burying his head in the sand, but that's the road he's decided to walk down. What are you talking about? Of course Ludde has has forced his ideals on the network. He agreed to incorporate the private flag, didn't he? It is akin to the television broadcast flag, in my opinion. Who is anyone tell me what I can or cannot do with the bits on my machine? Certainly not an artificial construct like a tracker. Now that we have the DHT network, everyone can be a tracker. Fine, you don't like manual peer ban? CVS your own copy, take that feature out, and recompile. Nobody's forcing you to use their binary, just as I'm free to mod �Torrent should I not agree with its so-called features. You were saying something about holes? Not surprising, since you don't seem to possess the attention span to required read past the first sentence of a paragraph before rendering judgement. And we have. Yay for reverse engineering. Now you're catching on! Simple, because the binary I have sitting on my HDD is mine to manipulate. I'm not questioning his right for propriety, but his motivations. And so far, none of his arguments have been very convincing. Somehow, "just because" doesn't cut it intellectually anymore. The open source concept is sound. The creative works generated from that philosophy, however, are not guaranteed to succeed given the simply fact that to err is human. Have you taken a look at this page recently? Now note all the features marked "Unlikely to be implemented" as well as the forum posts by Ludde pertaining to each of them. Clearly there is demand for them, but in the end, it's really in Ludde's power to ignore them all. Every creator has to constrain their imaginations due to practicality's sake, personal preference, etc. Ludde just has his own set of criteria. And he cannot still do the same with an open methodology? I've already mentioned one project that's done that successfully. Or is he just afraid to compete with clones of his original. Oh, whoops, too late for that. And how many more were stiffled for that very reason? I mean, look what happened when id Software finally released their code for Quake. Thanks to that decision, I can now play it even on my PocketPC. It's even been used in modern art in novel ways. None of this would have been possible had id left that franchise to rot in some dark corner. I cannot think of any closed source program that wasn't used primarily as a vehicle for commercial gain. No, but that's not really important. New developers offer choices which have not been addressed by the status quo. All users will be served, not only the ones that agree with Luddes vision. But then again, he probably values "control" over "choice".
  2. Is that not what I just said o_O? And, technically, it wasn't even my analogy. That was Odium's. I just took the point to its logical conclusion. Methinks your reading comprehension skills need a little brushing up. Yes, I know who Ludde is. And it intruigues me how both OpenTTD and ScummVM, no longer under the management of Ludde, can be open source and not µTorrent. But I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. He's gotta protect his precious intellectual property and make a buck just like every other joe. Just don't be under any false pretenses that this is anything but a testing ground for his commercial ventures. It is just business as usual and many other developers struggle with similar issues (i.e. BrainSlayer of DD-WRT fame). If you can live with that, then by all means continue to use µTorrent to your heart's content. And for the record, I did not mention "crook". You did. To imitate is to mold the preexistent. There is nothing new under the sun; we are simply a remix culture. You know, standing on the shoulders of giants and all that jazz? And there is nothing wrong with that. We all need inspiration to create things. By attempting to deny me the freedom to tinker with the bits on my own machine, it has become a totalitarian act, a dictatorship. I will do with my bits as I please. And right now, I am using a hacked version of µTorrent that conforms to my vision. Ludde is, of course, entitled to his own. Just don't force it on me. So did the original devs for ScummVM. What's your point? Now allow me to make mine, IT DOESN'T MATTER! The code prevails. And how exactly have these "rogue mods" harmed the code base? And please do not give some cockeyed response about semantic constructs "reputation" or "vision". The original developers have free reign to pick and choose whatever features they see fit, just as anyone else has their right to select whatever they want for their own client. The proliferation of a diverse range of modifications stemming from the code base attests to its ultimate success. You see that as a failure of control and it is! Real creativity comes not from clutching tightly to your creation, but letting it go to take on a life of its own. It is rather simple, actually. We wrestle with these issues all the time with eMule's code. Unfortunately, it requires moving a lot of the intelligence from the trackers to the clients, which would defeat a lot of Bittorrent's efficiency. To curb private tracker abuse you would need to have a "spy" client connected to the tracker as well as the DHT network. The tracker would then update the client with all the other currently connected clients. The client then parses all the clients it sees in the DHT network for ones matching the tracker's list. It then reports back the results to the tracker, which summarily bans (temporarily or permanently, automated or otherwise) those IPs connected to it. This can all be done in real-time and costs the tracker very little bandwidth, considering only one client is needed to collect the reconnoissance data. As for manual banning, there really is not much you can do, since it is done client-side. I suppose you could perform a statistical analysis over time on the tracker's end to create a composite profile of the types of clients it is rejecting. If all of them are, say, modem users or all clients not from a certain geographical area, then that might raise some red flags. When you understand yourself and you understand your enemy, then victory is assured. ...that you totally missed mine. It's not just theoretically likely that there are hacked µTorrent clients, the do exist. I've got a few sitting on my hard drive right now (no, I don't actively use them). But that doesn't mean that the original developers are somehow obligated to incorporate every feature from every modification. That would just be ludicrious, even ignoring the many conflicting features from various mods! My point is that the mere existance of undesireable forks, whatever they may be, does not implicitly invalidate the original codebase. People may worry about "diluting mindshare", but that is the small price you pay for freedom of choice. It's all about options and not being imprisoned by another's ideals. He is entitled to his version of vision and his copy of work. Once it enters my machine, all bets are off.
  3. Wrong assessment. If you claim to know anything about the science, you must know that any claim or discovery must be backed up with proof that is both observable and repeatable by anyone. What we have now is the product, but not the procedure. Are we then supposed to take the scientist's word on faith? Of course not! He would be laughed out of the scientific commmunity if that were the case. Then again, Ludde is not a scientist, but a businessman. He is more interested in protecting his nebulous assets than serving the global community. Well, you can always check for blatant inconsistencies (i.e. differing strings, protocol, etc.), but generally you cannot, which is why the source alone can be truly trustworthy. The binaries are for the clueless masses who do not know/care about their security. Their apathy deserves whatever tragedy comes their way. Because protocol analysis is only a fraction of the puzzle. Understanding how the software reacts to the protocol is much more important. In any case, real freedom is never free. It is bought with eternal vigilance. And exactly what kind of game is he trying to play, pray tell? Perhaps his ultimate aim is to capitalize on his "hobby"? It makes sense seeing how he's attempting to market his core intellectual property (ugh) to PeerFactor these days. No, this is no hobby. This is free beta testing and debugging. You are correct only in the latter regard. I believe an overwhelming component of function is extensibility, the ability to mold the program to fit your liking. If Ludde is so confident in his "vision", then he should be secure enough to allow others to inspect and build off of his work. After all, imitation is the best form of flattery and any cheap knockoffs will only serve to highlight the superior skills of the original coder. I agree that popularity by itself is no definitive indicator of quality, however, there is a strong correllation between popularity and quality, especially among the developer community. Why else would developers invest their time in a project unless they felt it worthy of their talents? Of course, the opinions of passive users don't count for anything since they are unaware of the issues that affect large-scale networks and will only voice their approval for anything that offers them a "faster download". I would still prefer an oligarchy to a dictatorship. At least then there is the possibility of getting a feature implemented that a single developer doesn't agree with (i.e. plugins, TCP NAT traversal, overhead included in bandwidth calculations, etc.). Vision is highly overrated. If an idea is powerful enough to stand on its own, people will naturally gravitate toward it. If not, then it should rightfully die and fade into obscurity. A fine example of a solid idea in the midst of many imitators is the eMule client. The developers allow anybody to make modifications to their copy of the source code, even malicious changes, but they don't try to stamp them out. Instead, they adapt to new threats through intelligent design. Furthermore, the vast majority of beneficial developers have strengthened and improved the code over time many times better than the original developers could have ever done by themselves. And all this assistance was done free of charge! Furthermore, most of the modifications come back to original codebase whenever it is updated because they know it is that reliable. The original developers never lost any "vision", they gained the support of a worldwide pool of knowledge and expertise while still maintaining control over their own code. Indeed... Not like it mattered what he thought in the end. People still got their manual ban right along with their ignore private flag features and without having to sacrifice anything. Now, if he had released the code, many great minds would have been able to counter such actions with appropriate reactions in a matter of days. Security solely via obscurity. How many times have I heard that lame excuse before: "Well, it's better than nothing!" No, it's not better than nothing. Ludde's only deluding himself with a false sense of security if he thinks hiding behind the assumed opacity of a binary is going to offer a modicum of protection. We're not even talking about perfection at this point, just common sense. Why yes, it is. I may not agree with Bram's decision to base his DHT implementation on Bamboo (though I understand where he is coming from), but again, the democratic majority has spoken. That, by definition, makes Azureus a minority, a loner. Then again, because of its open source nature, anyone is able to recode the DHT to be compliant with the majority of the network.
  4. They're dead for a reason: because nobody has any interest in them, including the developers. So, no, they are not great in any sense of the word. The people have spoken. Heh, it's interesting how you answered your first question so eloquently. Now about your second one, the difference is that this community can only make suggestions while an open source community can make changes. Anyway, the analogy is flawed because it wouldn't be the baby itself the community would be tinkering around with, but a carbon copy clone of that baby. The original baby would be unchanged and the parents would be free to raise it as they saw fit. Likewise, Ludde would be free to develop his own client as he has always done. The only difference would be the "mindshare" that may potentially be drawn away from the original should the clones prove more popular. Perhaps it is this loss of control that he truly fears. The problem with treating "intellectual property" as physical property is that ideas cannot be constrained like a tangible good (and even those are being threatened by technologies like rapid prototypers). They are ever subject to the fickle desires of the public and often times transferring power to the people makes the elite nervous. That's why I simply abhor analogies. They end up as a circuitous discourse without arriving at a logical conclusion. So far, all I've seen are contratradictions with only a single substantive query. One doesn't even need to see the code in order to modify the client's behavior. Any schmuck with half a brain can Google for himself and find reverse engineered uTorrent clients on leecher boards all over the Internet. How exactly has keeping the code proprietary prevented "muddling"? Answer: It has not. Of course, Ludde can try to obfuscate away in a vain attempt to prevent further modification, but we all know it will only be a matter of time before even that measure is rendered void. I see from another thread the he's digitally signing his builds. Perhaps in the future, we may begin to see some draconian retribution in the form of official uTorrent clients banning all other uTorrents that do not respond with the proper crypto signature. That will be a dark day, indeed. I would certainly hope so if he wants to maintain compatability with the rest of the world. Otherwise, uTorrent would be an loner cut off from the larger network. I have written above why this statement is misguided. In the words of the great Thomas Jefferson: "He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine—as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." We must each have the courage to step out of our reclusive Dark Age into the light of a new Rennaissance.
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