

Maelstrom, the BitTorrent Browser Is Now in Public Beta - realusername
http://blog.bittorrent.com/2015/04/10/project-maelstrom-enters-beta/

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vdaniuk
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.

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xtrumanx
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.

~~~
vdaniuk
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.

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

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Attious
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.

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thejrk
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.

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mithras
I would be more excited if it was open source.

