Filed under: Software, Open Source
Questions about BitRocket abound
News is coming in via digg commenters and posts on forum threads linked therein which seems to indicate and give evidence that BitRocket uses code taken from the Transmission.app source without giving any attribution as required by the MIT license under which Transmission is released. These accusations are further supported by the fact that the developer of BitRocket, Julian Ashton, previously developed XFactor, a P2P application, which was proven to take code from the Poisoned project, again without proper attribution.
Update: Scott, our fearless leader, did some digging and found a post on the forum thread linked that I seem to have missed. According to at least one account, BitRocket does properly credit the source it uses.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
minime said 8:11PM on 9-05-2006
This is the kinda bullshit spreading through the net because of stupid people not understanding what they are talking about.
1. Bitrocket.org -> OpenSource, check the code
2. Bitrocket uses libtorrent (BSD-license) not libtransmission
3. Transmission-developers are just angry because this 0.1 Beta looks better than their own app (even if functionality is yet there)
Well Dan, how about investigating some info before writing duck-tales, thank you
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:3 said 8:17PM on 9-05-2006
how about we boycott TUAW because of that stupid mosquito sound
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Don Parr said 8:20PM on 9-05-2006
If these accusations are "true." I will go no where near nor use the application. Having said that, Please provide the facts, nothing but the facts, so help you God.
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Mephistophelian said 8:20PM on 9-05-2006
This work with Demonoid?
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minime said 8:28PM on 9-05-2006
Quoting the forum provided in the article
the Prove: (lol)
"Mac:~ me$ strings Transmission.app/Contents/MacOS/Transmission > temp
Mac:~ me$ strings BitRocket.app/Contents/MacOS/BitRocket >> temp
Mac:~ me$ wc -l temp
2686 temp
Mac:~ me$ sort temp | uniq | wc -l
2092 "
Please note that this compare works with any cocoa-apps because of the same classes used.
It's ashaming that someone intelligent enough to have a mac is not intelligent enough to provide investigative journalism. It's not that there's something wrong here, it's complete bullshit.
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jasontho said 8:28PM on 9-05-2006
I used it and i found it to suck anyways.
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Kevin S. said 8:55PM on 9-05-2006
yea, it looks great, but it's pretty much useless.
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Bill I said 9:15PM on 9-05-2006
@6 and 7
It's a 0.1 release!?! How useful do you truly expect a 0.1 release to be?
Now, if this were a 1.0 release, I suppose I could see your point...
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miyamotofreak said 9:30PM on 9-05-2006
No wonder it didn't work with oink!
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Nick said 9:35PM on 9-05-2006
I think the big fuss is due to the fact that BitRocket DID use libtransmission. Jolix then pulled that build and began using libtorrent, presumably to get around some issues with Transmission's code and to get some bigger features (DHT, UPnP, etc.).
I think it's too earlier to dismiss it outright, but we'll have to see how it turns out. Just remember that Transmission 0.1 wasn't very feature-filled or pretty - it will take time for it to blossom.
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Jerome said 10:42PM on 9-05-2006
Yeah i have yet to see proof of foul play at all, bunch of BS or cluelessness. Now it's possibly what #10 says, I saw the 0.1 (20) release where it was using libtorrent, not a clue if it used anything different like libtransmission before that since I caught it at the point it was using libtorrent, so all this bad publicity seems to be uncalled for in my eyes, specially because i haven't seen a damn thing. I'm going to keep an eye on it, seems like it might be a nice client and I don't see any reason to hate on it yet.
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brandon said 11:37PM on 9-05-2006
it would be very big of this site to offer an apology, or some kind of "i'm sorry for shitting on your potential user base prospects".
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Ted said 12:33AM on 9-06-2006
I find it works amazing, just has to get some more features implimented. The Xfactor/poisoned thing was bullshit. The poisoned devs stopped working on it, Jolix made an update to try and save openFT and they got all pissy about it so he made it own client which used the source unwarentedly but you have to remember that he made poisoned big when it actually worked as well.
Wrong to take code, but worse to have code left around which code be used for good purposes.
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Nate said 12:54AM on 9-06-2006
Look. This is conjecture blown out of proportion. The reason this case is not routine is because the developer, well he's iffy.
Bit Rocket was originally released sans source code or any acknowledgments of any kind regarding any borrowed code. His company is called Clone Software, Ltd., and its site is a mostly empty WP blog. The group-think machine that is digg takes the circumstance and runs with it.
Those are the facts. My opinion is that the developer seems slightly less than professional. Look at his (Jolix) comments in this thread: http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/05/bitrocket/#comments
Not very professional... It's really just a matter of the developer not understanding public relations very well. He could have quelled this nonsense some time ago.
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Ton Ensing said 2:53AM on 9-06-2006
Hey, did someone actually check the 'about BitRocket' window? Guess not, 'cause it says:
"BitRocket uses portions of Transmission and libTransmission and are MIT licensed.
More information on these can be found at the Transmission web site (http://transmission.m0k.org/)."
Right..
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MySchizoBuddy said 3:11AM on 9-06-2006
the about bitrocket says this
"Design and Implementation by Clone Software, Ltd.
http://www.clonesoftware.net/
Uses libtorrent by Arvid Norberg of Rasterbar Software.
http://libtorrent.sf.net
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DuMaurier said 8:48AM on 9-06-2006
I tried it last night and it performed pretty well. Still not as fast as Azereus but it sure looks a lot better. The search function is kind of useless and the RSS function seems akward but the UI is generally nice and clean. Having a badged dock icon is a nice touch.
Anyway, it's just another case of Mac users going off the handle for nothing and the Mac press (like TUAW) pick up on it without looking further into it.
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John Hopper said 9:34AM on 9-06-2006
My about window - 0.1(20) - says:
Uses libtorrent by Arvid Norberg of Rasterbar Software.
http://libtorrent.sf.net
I still prefer Transmission - KISS. Hope they fix their announce problems soon.
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Ton said 11:38AM on 9-06-2006
Well, err, the new version (as shown in the screenshot) does in fact credit Clone and Libtorrent as #16 and #18 stated. The older versions used (and credited) Transmission and libTransmission).
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controllah said 5:35PM on 9-07-2006
I've been using it since yesterday as a default client (had an update delivered already!) even though functionality is still missing and it has crashed like 4-5 times so far, everything works as expected (10/10 torrents downloaded correctly), being a 0.1 version future is looking good for this one, and it's not bloated at all. Every piece of info it provides is very useful for power users.
I would donate to this project.
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