Bittorrent and Utorrent merge

[zeroday]

This is Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, the writer of ?Torrent.

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and ?Torrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired ?Torrent as it recognized the merits of ?Torrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together ?Torrent'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 ?Torrent 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 ?Torrent 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 ?Torrent 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 ?Torrent. Thank you in advance for your support.

Bram and Ludde

+++++

both Bram and Ludde are available now on IRC #utorrent and will be answering questions for the next few hours.

A new forum has been created - uTorrent/BitTorrent - please use this new forum for all topics related to the uTorrent acquisition

Source

Utorrent IRC: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/utorrent

[Elliot B.]

Brilliant :D

[User6060]

Good for them to recognize the BEST Torrent app imo

[AdverseDeviant]

hopefully they don't **** it up now. or worse charge for it....

[what]

the best BitTorrent client.

I hope this doesn't mean the uTorrent client will be overloaded with pointless features like Azureus. It shouldn't do, but for me there'll always be that worry.

[Copernic Reporter]

''BitTorrent, Inc. Acquires ?Torrent>'' :no:: This is not good news for me, See how Bram Cohen see a business also not to forget that Bram Cohen teamed up with Paramount, MTV, 20th Century Fox and other big bad boys.

http://www.slyck.com/story1357.html

[Morphie]

I hope this means there will be an OS X version of uTorrent.

[Kriz]

Wow, awesome news :D

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

I hope Bram doesn't screw this client up.

On the up side, though, will uTorrent become Open-Source now? :D

[NienorGT]

As Copernic said, may not be good for Pirates :whistle:

[Guest]

Cool.

[Anand]

I hope this means there will be an OS X version of uTorrent.

Yeah! I want that!!

[Ferret]

I've been using uTorrent for sometime - I just hope they improve the DHT !

[Stephen Veteran]

hope this turns out well....

YEY my 600th post :p

ste

[giga Veteran]

I hope this means there will be an OS X version of uTorrent.

*prays*

[Pupik]

As Copernic said, may not be good for Pirates :whistle:

Why not? Just because some videos from "Bittorent Video Store" (WTF is that?), gonna be protected by DRM?

[LOC Veteran]

You guys seem to forget, Mr. Cohen was recently ousted from his own company there, he isn't in "bed" with any media companies that's for sure. In fact I bet he's pretty ****ed off. Heh.

I think this is great, kudos to the uTorrent developer(s) as you finally get the recognition you deserve as the BEST torrent client there is!

Just confirmed in the IRC channel - there WILL be an OS X version of uTorrent coming up.

[hyb]

I think something fishy is going on. Maybe the mpaa gave money to bittorent to buy utorrent :p

[Azusa]

lol this has MPAA all over it

[LOC Veteran]

Guys, relax. Not everything in this world is some huge conspiracy you know. Even if BitTorrent Inc. adds monitoring stuff and bloat etc to uTorrent, you can always switch to a new client. And I'm sure someone else will write a new client to replace it if needed.

[Fourjays Veteran]

This is the bit that worries me...

we will continue to develop ?Torrent 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.

Sounds like they plan to make uTorrent for special applications only... Which would be a shame. I must admit that I have only tried BitComet and uTorrent, but after using uTorrent I haven't found a need to look elsewhere. It's easy to use and light-weight. Enough said.:pp

[+Tantawi Subscriber²]

I'm not pleased with this news until I see the result! but as LOC said, it may be not that bad after all, and there's always other clients.

[Copernic Reporter]

I hope Bram doesn't screw this client up.

On the up side, though, will uTorrent become Open-Source now? :D

Nope: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=17280

Q: Will the uTorrent code base be released into the open source?

A: The uTorrent code base will remain closed source.

[ThePitt]

Open source and close source together...

I wonder if this is something for a good cause. In general terms, and not only good for both of them :shifty:

[Anand]

Just confirmed in the IRC channel - there WILL be an OS X version of uTorrent coming up.

I guess that sounds the death knell for Transmission, Xtorrent and Bitrocket.