On 2 Apr 2003, Jeff Bearer wrote: > > - "How does Red Hat feel about programs like BitTorrent as a primary > > method of distribution?" > > > > If your willing to use BitTorrent to avoid paying $60 then you would > > probably also be willing to wait a week to avoid paying $60. Even if > > BitTorrent became the most popular (or "primary") method of distribution, > > it still does not become an "offical" channel. There are several RHN > > customers that will not use an unoffical BitTorrent and may not even be > > willing to use an FTP mirror. If you want to demand an offical method of > > access, Red Hat provides RHN. If your willing to get it via unoffical > > methods then that is good too. > > Was my post really that hard to understand? It seemed pretty clear to > me but it should, I wrote it. Let me try to explain. > > Pretend I posted this next Monday and the iso's are on every FTP server > in the world, now let me ask the question. "How does Red Hat feel about > utilizing BitTorrent as a major method of official distribution." They > would create the .torrent file. and seed the ISO's. And people are > actually able to get shrike without having to wait 2 weeks to find an > open slot on an ftp server.
Ahhh... with "I bet this is a little bitter sweet for Red Hat," as the lead-in to the question, it read differently. It seems like the biggest blocker to offically promoting use of BitTorrent over using curl (http) or ftp mirrors is providing the BitTorrent client. RH seems to be over 70% of the way towards being able to support distributing the BitTorrent client. They already write, distribute and support applications which use Python and Gtk. But they seem to prefer to access Gtk in their own apps via PyGNOME instead of via wxPython. There would be advantages if they switched to using wxPython. For example, they could use the same exact up2date based on wxPython on cygwin without having to run a X server (just then package cygwin as RPMs and add the approbate RHN channel). But, of course, just for the purposes of providing BitTorrent they wouldn't have to migrate their own stuff to wxPython, just provide wxPythonGTK. So, if they are willing to add wxPythonGTK to a future distributions, it would seem logical to also be willing to add BitTorrent to a future distribution. I'm guessing Red Hat should be able to easily figure out how to setup their own tracker, create the approbate .torrent files and leave the initial downloader online. The question then becomes, if Red Hat customers would be comfortable with a company promoting a BitTorrent method. Keep in mind, a HTTP or FTP download is between you can only one other source. The author of BitTorrent points out that this is inefficent. But at the same time customers are used to this level of exposer. There is an assumption (even if it is not correct) that there is a certain level of privacy with HTTP or FTP in the fact that when your download should only be logged by the web server or ftp server your downloading from. But if your downloading from BitTorrent then if Mr. Evil is leaving a downloader open he can log if any downloads that the tracker passes to his downloader. Also, Mr. Evil could purposily modify his BT downloader to issue corrupted BT packets and hurt the efficency of the BT network. While the ablilty of any one individual to make a privacy or efficency attack on a BT network goes down as the number of downloaders increase, the potental for such problems may still be troubling for customers acceptance. Given that neither wxPythonGTK or BitTorrent are currently distributed as offical RH RPMs, I doubt that we will see it offically promoted by RH this month. It is more likely that RH will add it as part of the Fall 2003 release of RH. -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
