Maelstrom, the BitTorrent Browser Is Now in Public Beta

http://blog.bittorrent.com/2015/04/10/project-maelstrom-enters-beta/

by realusername • 11 years ago

21 7 11 years ago

blog.bittorrent.com

vdaniuk2• 11 years ago

Ughs

* no linux version

* not open source

* announcement is very light on technical implementation

Unanswered questions

* Does it have any proprietory bittorrent protocol extensions?

* Will there be a possibility for open source community to produce alternative clients?

* Will there be firefox-like extensions?

* What about encryption/authorization/security/privacy?

It's frustrating to read about such an exciting concept with the most important details left out. I've searched around but wasn't able to find anything in depth.

Would appreciate a link or additional information from knowledgeable HN readers.

xtrumanx• 11 years ago

Shouldn't be too surprised about the lack of open source. They also didn't open source Bittorrent Sync which was another exciting application of bittorrent.

vdaniuk2• 11 years ago

Absolutely not surprised. While being sympathetic to ethos of the general torrent community, I don't think that Bittorrent Inc. is one of the good guys. Too closed, too profit oriented, too corporate in their ways.

Bittorrent Inc. is both shady AND dilbert-like in its monetization shenanigans (bitcoin minerware for consumer PCs in 2015, really?). Such feat is not easily achieved. Sometimes I wonder if they are a trojan horse for the distributed content delivery community at large, making dumb moves on purpose to tarnish the torrent protocol brand. Hanlon's razor objection noted.

So I won't be using maelstorm due to trust issues but I would be really interested in alternative clients.

Attious• 11 years ago

Had a good time trying it out. While it's still in early stages, I can't wait for when it's adopted more widely. However, like vdaniuk, I wish there was more information given.

mithras• 11 years ago

I would be more excited if it was open source.

wnevets• 11 years ago

I refuse to use any software from bittorrent.com after what they did to utorrent.

thejrk• 11 years ago

It won't install for me. I suspect it's being caught by av or anti-malware software on my machine but I'm not excited enough to troubleshoot it.

Maelstrom, the BitTorrent Browser Is Now in Public Beta

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