Lock, Stock and Two Smoking FoxTorrents
06-05-2007 15:34
к комментариям - к полной версии
- понравилось!
(пока описал ситуацию по-английски, чтобы раскидать линк на англоязычные сайты)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking FoxTorrents
Integrating BitTorrent support to Firefox became a hot trend last days. Hot enough for the situation when two projects collide over the same name (rather obvious for BitTorrent/Firefox extension - FoxTorrent). One FoxTorrent is a frontend for Azureus, another is for Red Swoosh.
To make the difference, we'll call two projects with the same name FoxTorrent_A (A for Azureus) and FoxTorrent_RS (RS for Red Swoosh).
Story timeline:
Dec 1 2006
First sign of FoxTorrent_A development
(according to CVS log http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/foxtorrent)
Feb 24 2007
foxtorrent.com domain registered by Red Swoosh, Inc
Mar 3 2007
A former employee leaks FoxTorrent_RS internal beta http://torrentfreak.com/foxtorrent-another-bittorrent-firefox-extension
Mar 7 2007
FoxTorrent_RS posing leak as an alpha release http://mailman.redswoosh.net/pipermail/rsdiscuss/2007-March/000129.html
Apr 12 2007
RedSwoosh acquired by Akamai http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2007/press_041207.html
Apr 12 2007
Tharpa Roberts of FoxTorrent_A writes to rsdiscuss http://mailman.redswoosh.net/pipermail/rsdiscuss/2007-April/000176.html
Apr 25 2007
David Barrett replies to Tharpa Roberts http://mailman.redswoosh.net/pipermail/rsdiscuFss/2007-April/000186.html
Apr 26 2007
FoxTorrent_RS v. 1.0 release
Now let's examine this events and then go deeper into some Red Swoosh background.
First, we'll have a look at FoxTorrent_A (as i guess by timeline, the original FoxTorrent). It is a Firefox extension that enables downloading of .torrent links with Azureus, well-known cross-platform BitTorrent client, nominated #2 on Torrentfreak's BitTorrent clients chart.
According to whois data, foxtorrent.com domain was registered on Feb 24 2007. This is clear sign of investment in FoxTorrent_RS project.
Next, the internal beta of FoxTorrent_RS got leaked by former Red Swoosh employee, with some comments like "Bram [Cohen] is going to shit his pants when he takes our client for a spin". Red Swoosh CEO Travis Kalanick apologized at Red Swoosh blog:
"First, I am not exactly elated about the situation. Though his heart was in the right place, he [leaker] was in no way authorized to discuss this product with anybody on the outside. Taking things even further he also had pretty irresponsible comments about Bittorrent, and about Bram Cohen in particular. You can read the article if you want to see the gory details, but brash comments about taking over Bittorrent “within a year” and Bram Cohen soiling himself made it so I had to respond to the story here.
So our apologies to Bram. Bittorrent is something to be proud of and Swoosh is contributing to the community.". FoxTorrent_RS team has changed the location of file on its server and password-protected the access, giving it out to beta team (while posting the password to world-readable rsdiscuss mailing list).
Here Akamai Tech comes in. Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) is one of old and well-known Internet companies, describing themselves as "... the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online". That means (between other business processes) online advertising. There is no purpose for Akamai to buy P2P startup for $15M, if they don't consider Red Swoosh as an content (i.e. advertising) delivery platform.
On the day of Akamai's press-release Tharpa Roberts of FoxTorrent_A writes to rsdiscuss:
"Gentlepeople:
Please change the name of your software to something else. The name
FoxTorrent is already taken. http://foxtorrent.mozdev.org
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Tharpa C. Roberts
FoxTorrent Team"
It took two weeks for FoxTorrent_RS' David Barrett to respond :
"Hi Tharpa. According to DNS /foxtorrent.com> , Google Code
/code.google.com/p/foxtorrent/> , Wikipedia
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_client> , and addons.mozilla.org
/addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4844> , FoxTorrent is us.
Now I'll admit this initially came as a surprise to us all - FoxTorrent was
the internal codename of a new product (selected well before we learned of
your past project) that got unexpected leaked /www.redswoosh.net/blog/?p=69> one day. Then we got a bunch
/torrentfreak.com/foxtorrent-another-bittorrent-firefox-extension/>
of
/www.digg.com/software/FoxTorrent_Slick_Firefox_BitTorrent_Extension>
coverage /forums.torrentspy.com/showthread.php?t=40776> under that
name, and now we're sorta stuck with it.
I respect that you created a neat albeit short-lived project with the same
name a while back, and I apologize for the confusion this causes any users
you might have. But I'm afraid what's done is done.
-david"
There's one issue with Barrett's response: he writes "FoxTorrent was
the internal codename of a new product (selected well before we learned of
your past project) that got unexpected leaked /www.redswoosh.net/blog/?p=69> one day.
Then we got a bunch /torrentfreak.com/foxtorrent-another-bittorrent-firefox-extension/>
of coverage". But the blog post by Travis Kalanick is entitled The Torrentfreak Situation, so it seems that Barrett doesn't follow straight order of events. To my opinion, squatting someone's name and rejecting a polite request to return it is against ethics.
To quote Wikipedia on Firefox naming,
"The Phoenix name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed (after a short stint as Phoenix Browser) due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, Firebird, was met with mixed reactions, particularly as the Firebird database server already carried the name. In late April, following an apparent name change to Firebird browser for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation issued an official statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as Mozilla Firebird (as opposed to just Firebird). Continuing pressure from the Firebird community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 the project was renamed Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short)". Quite a different approach.
Now let's look into FoxTorrent_RS and Red Swoosh.
FoxTorrent_RS silently installs Red Swoosh client, which starts simultaneously with Firefox, and eats 6 MB of RAM (on my machine; rsdiscuss mentions usage of up to 15 MB). Foxtorrent.com warns that "Foxtorrent uses less than 8 MB of RAM, and doesn't hog bandwidth".
Let's read Red Swoosh EULA:
"The Software is part of an integrated content delivery and communications system for efficiently disseminating software, images, text, video, music and other digital information across the Internet. Participating publishers of such information on the Internet have asked Red Swoosh to manage the delivery of such information to you and other end-users in an effort to make your downloads more efficient. Users of the Software share published software, images, text, video, music and other digital information managed by Red Swoosh ("Published Content"). When you are on-line, therefore, the Software may share Published Content on your computer system with other Red Swoosh Clients that have requested such Published Content. In that regard, Red Swoosh makes commercially reasonable efforts to avoid interfering with your other on-line activities (for example, we limit the amount of your available bandwidth that the Red Swoosh Client may use to share content so that most users will not notice performance degradation). Red Swoosh makes commercially reasonable efforts to avoid interfering with your system resources. You acknowledge and consent to the sharing and downloading of Published Content and agree that the Software may send commands to the Red Swoosh Client installed on your system to facilitate the downloading of Published Content and to share Published Content between you and other end-users.
.....
Red Swoosh and its licensors retain all copyrights, trade secret rights, patents, trademarks, and any other proprietary rights covering or relating to the Software. You acknowledge that the Software includes or incorporates proprietary and confidential information belonging to Red Swoosh and its licensors." Far from open-source, isn't it? Basically, this EULA clause may be interpreted as "prepare to receive content-rich advertising from Akamai and client manipulation by Red Swoosh". Though i'm not a lawyer and may be overly paranoid.
Another point of interest is Red Swoosh privacy policy (http://www.redswoosh.net/privacy.php; currently available only to registered users or via Google cache), that states:
"Aggregated Data.
From time to time, we may share aggregated Usage Data with third parties. We will not share any aggregated data, however, in a manner that would enable the recipient to personally identify you.
Service Providers
From time to time, we may enter into relationships with third parties who provide services to us (e.g., credit card processing services). In those circumstances, we disclose information about you that is necessary for such service providers to perform those services, but only if such service providers agree not to disclose your information except as absolutely necessary to perform such services.
Other Disclosure Scenarios
Notwithstanding anything in this privacy policy to the contrary, we reserve the right, unless limited by applicable law, to share any information we have collected about you or that you have submitted: (1) in response to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or property; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding situations that involve significant abuse of our Service infrastructure or the Internet in general (such as voluminous spamming, denial of service attacks, or attempts to compromise the security of information); (4) to our parent company, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control with us (in which case we will require such entities to honor this privacy policy); and (5) if we are acquired by or merged with another entity."
Misc facts about Red Swoosh:
- Red Swoosh is put on malware lists by some antivirus vendors and is fighting to get off these lists ( http://www.akamai.com/html/redswoosh/record.html );
- There is a wiki page titled What We Don't Want You to Know About Swoosh, definitely worth reading to anyone interested in FoxTorrent_RS and/or Red Swoosh;
[показать]
- One of FoxTorrent_RS logo variants reads "Enabling BitTorrent downloads in Firefox since 1963" http://torrentfreak.com//images/foxtorrent_logo.jpg ;
- Investor Mark Cuban, who gave $1.7M to Red Swoosh in 2005, also invests in Brondell, manufacturer of toilet seat brand Swash - is it just a co-incidence or some obscure branding+investment strategy?
вверх^
к полной версии
понравилось!
в evernote
(пока описал ситуацию по-английски, чтобы раскидать линк на англоязычные сайты)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking FoxTorrents
Integrating BitTorrent support to Firefox became a hot trend last days. Hot enough for the situation when two projects collide over the same name (rather obvious for BitTorrent/Firefox extension - FoxTorrent). One FoxTorrent is a frontend for Azureus, another is for Red Swoosh.
To make the difference, we'll call two projects with the same name FoxTorrent_A (A for Azureus) and FoxTorrent_RS (RS for Red Swoosh).
Story timeline:
First sign of FoxTorrent_A development
(according to CVS log http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/foxtorrent)
foxtorrent.com domain registered by Red Swoosh, Inc
A former employee leaks FoxTorrent_RS internal beta http://torrentfreak.com/foxtorrent-another-bittorrent-firefox-extension
FoxTorrent_RS posing leak as an alpha release http://mailman.redswoosh.net/pipermail/rsdiscuss/2007-March/000129.html
RedSwoosh acquired by Akamai http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2007/press_041207.html
Tharpa Roberts of FoxTorrent_A writes to rsdiscuss http://mailman.redswoosh.net/pipermail/rsdiscuss/2007-April/000176.html
David Barrett replies to Tharpa Roberts http://mailman.redswoosh.net/pipermail/rsdiscuFss/2007-April/000186.html
FoxTorrent_RS v. 1.0 release
Now let's examine this events and then go deeper into some Red Swoosh background.
First, we'll have a look at FoxTorrent_A (as i guess by timeline, the original FoxTorrent). It is a Firefox extension that enables downloading of .torrent links with Azureus, well-known cross-platform BitTorrent client, nominated #2 on Torrentfreak's BitTorrent clients chart.
According to whois data, foxtorrent.com domain was registered on Feb 24 2007. This is clear sign of investment in FoxTorrent_RS project.
Next, the internal beta of FoxTorrent_RS got leaked by former Red Swoosh employee, with some comments like "Bram [Cohen] is going to shit his pants when he takes our client for a spin". Red Swoosh CEO Travis Kalanick apologized at Red Swoosh blog:
"First, I am not exactly elated about the situation. Though his heart was in the right place, he [leaker] was in no way authorized to discuss this product with anybody on the outside. Taking things even further he also had pretty irresponsible comments about Bittorrent, and about Bram Cohen in particular. You can read the article if you want to see the gory details, but brash comments about taking over Bittorrent “within a year” and Bram Cohen soiling himself made it so I had to respond to the story here.
So our apologies to Bram. Bittorrent is something to be proud of and Swoosh is contributing to the community.". FoxTorrent_RS team has changed the location of file on its server and password-protected the access, giving it out to beta team (while posting the password to world-readable rsdiscuss mailing list).
Here Akamai Tech comes in. Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) is one of old and well-known Internet companies, describing themselves as "... the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online". That means (between other business processes) online advertising. There is no purpose for Akamai to buy P2P startup for $15M, if they don't consider Red Swoosh as an content (i.e. advertising) delivery platform.
On the day of Akamai's press-release Tharpa Roberts of FoxTorrent_A writes to rsdiscuss:
"Gentlepeople:
Please change the name of your software to something else. The name
FoxTorrent is already taken. http://foxtorrent.mozdev.org
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Tharpa C. Roberts
FoxTorrent Team"
It took two weeks for FoxTorrent_RS' David Barrett to respond :
"Hi Tharpa. According to DNS /foxtorrent.com> , Google Code
/code.google.com/p/foxtorrent/> , Wikipedia
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_client> , and addons.mozilla.org
/addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4844> , FoxTorrent is us.
Now I'll admit this initially came as a surprise to us all - FoxTorrent was
the internal codename of a new product (selected well before we learned of
your past project) that got unexpected leaked /www.redswoosh.net/blog/?p=69> one day. Then we got a bunch
/torrentfreak.com/foxtorrent-another-bittorrent-firefox-extension/>
of
/www.digg.com/software/FoxTorrent_Slick_Firefox_BitTorrent_Extension>
coverage /forums.torrentspy.com/showthread.php?t=40776> under that
name, and now we're sorta stuck with it.
I respect that you created a neat albeit short-lived project with the same
name a while back, and I apologize for the confusion this causes any users
you might have. But I'm afraid what's done is done.
-david"
There's one issue with Barrett's response: he writes "FoxTorrent was
the internal codename of a new product (selected well before we learned of
your past project) that got unexpected leaked /www.redswoosh.net/blog/?p=69> one day.
Then we got a bunch /torrentfreak.com/foxtorrent-another-bittorrent-firefox-extension/>
of coverage". But the blog post by Travis Kalanick is entitled The Torrentfreak Situation, so it seems that Barrett doesn't follow straight order of events. To my opinion, squatting someone's name and rejecting a polite request to return it is against ethics.
To quote Wikipedia on Firefox naming,
"The Phoenix name was retained until April 14, 2003 when it was changed (after a short stint as Phoenix Browser) due to trademark issues with the BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Technologies (who produce a BIOS-based browser called Phoenix FirstWare Connect). The new name, Firebird, was met with mixed reactions, particularly as the Firebird database server already carried the name. In late April, following an apparent name change to Firebird browser for a few hours, the Mozilla Foundation issued an official statement which stated that the browser should be referred to as Mozilla Firebird (as opposed to just Firebird). Continuing pressure from the Firebird community forced another change, and on February 9, 2004 the project was renamed Mozilla Firefox (or Firefox for short)". Quite a different approach.
Now let's look into FoxTorrent_RS and Red Swoosh.
FoxTorrent_RS silently installs Red Swoosh client, which starts simultaneously with Firefox, and eats 6 MB of RAM (on my machine; rsdiscuss mentions usage of up to 15 MB). Foxtorrent.com warns that "Foxtorrent uses less than 8 MB of RAM, and doesn't hog bandwidth".
Let's read Red Swoosh EULA:
"The Software is part of an integrated content delivery and communications system for efficiently disseminating software, images, text, video, music and other digital information across the Internet. Participating publishers of such information on the Internet have asked Red Swoosh to manage the delivery of such information to you and other end-users in an effort to make your downloads more efficient. Users of the Software share published software, images, text, video, music and other digital information managed by Red Swoosh ("Published Content"). When you are on-line, therefore, the Software may share Published Content on your computer system with other Red Swoosh Clients that have requested such Published Content. In that regard, Red Swoosh makes commercially reasonable efforts to avoid interfering with your other on-line activities (for example, we limit the amount of your available bandwidth that the Red Swoosh Client may use to share content so that most users will not notice performance degradation). Red Swoosh makes commercially reasonable efforts to avoid interfering with your system resources. You acknowledge and consent to the sharing and downloading of Published Content and agree that the Software may send commands to the Red Swoosh Client installed on your system to facilitate the downloading of Published Content and to share Published Content between you and other end-users.
.....
Red Swoosh and its licensors retain all copyrights, trade secret rights, patents, trademarks, and any other proprietary rights covering or relating to the Software. You acknowledge that the Software includes or incorporates proprietary and confidential information belonging to Red Swoosh and its licensors." Far from open-source, isn't it? Basically, this EULA clause may be interpreted as "prepare to receive content-rich advertising from Akamai and client manipulation by Red Swoosh". Though i'm not a lawyer and may be overly paranoid.
Another point of interest is Red Swoosh privacy policy (http://www.redswoosh.net/privacy.php; currently available only to registered users or via Google cache), that states:
"Aggregated Data.
From time to time, we may share aggregated Usage Data with third parties. We will not share any aggregated data, however, in a manner that would enable the recipient to personally identify you.
Service Providers
From time to time, we may enter into relationships with third parties who provide services to us (e.g., credit card processing services). In those circumstances, we disclose information about you that is necessary for such service providers to perform those services, but only if such service providers agree not to disclose your information except as absolutely necessary to perform such services.
Other Disclosure Scenarios
Notwithstanding anything in this privacy policy to the contrary, we reserve the right, unless limited by applicable law, to share any information we have collected about you or that you have submitted: (1) in response to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish, protect, or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or property; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding situations that involve significant abuse of our Service infrastructure or the Internet in general (such as voluminous spamming, denial of service attacks, or attempts to compromise the security of information); (4) to our parent company, subsidiaries, joint ventures, or other companies under common control with us (in which case we will require such entities to honor this privacy policy); and (5) if we are acquired by or merged with another entity."
Misc facts about Red Swoosh:
- Red Swoosh is put on malware lists by some antivirus vendors and is fighting to get off these lists ( http://www.akamai.com/html/redswoosh/record.html );
- There is a wiki page titled What We Don't Want You to Know About Swoosh, definitely worth reading to anyone interested in FoxTorrent_RS and/or Red Swoosh;
[показать]- One of FoxTorrent_RS logo variants reads "Enabling BitTorrent downloads in Firefox since 1963" http://torrentfreak.com//images/foxtorrent_logo.jpg ;
- Investor Mark Cuban, who gave $1.7M to Red Swoosh in 2005, also invests in Brondell, manufacturer of toilet seat brand Swash - is it just a co-incidence or some obscure branding+investment strategy?
Комментарии (1):
supper_apper
06-03-2008-06:24
удалить
ПРОЧИТАЙ,ЗАРЕГИСТРИРУЙСЯ И ПОЛУЧИ ДЕНЬГИ
ПРОСТО ЗАРАБАТЫВАЕМ НА АМЕРИКАНЦАХ!!!
ЗАРАБОТАТЬ 27$ ЗА 10 МИНУТ! НЕ ВЕРИШЬ?Реально!
Переходим по ссылке: $6.00 Welcome Survey After Free Registration!
Абсолютно бесплатная процедура
Инструкция:
1.Нажимаем Create A Free Account
2.Заполняем поля:
UserName-имя пользователя
Password-пароль 7-15 знаков
First Name-имя
Last Name-фамилия
Email Address-почтовый ящик
Далее вводим цифры буквы, нажимаем кнопку Create A Free Account
Ура!!! Мы зарегистрировались!!!
3.Далее видим таблицу, имеющую такой вид:
Welkome Survey-A6.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A February Bonus Website Evaluation is Available
4.Щелкаем по одной из ссылок на этой странице, попадаем на следующую страницу(тут нам радостно сообщают, что нам заплатят 6$ и это займет всего 5-10 минут) и там щелкаем по надписи:
Start Survey now
5.Открываются 2 ссылки и 2 поля, в них надо написать отзыв о сайте на английском языке, кто не силен пишу шаблон-пример:
it is ah excellentsite,l shall advise its all!!!
6.Щелкаете по кнопке внизу»Click to submit»? Переместились на страницу на которой нам сообщают ,что на ваш баланс зачислено 6$. Щелкаем по ссылке «Click Here to go Home and…»
7. и так далее по ссылочкам, и так каждый день…
8. Для вывода денег воспользуйтесь кнопкой «Redeem Money»
ОДИН ДЕНЬ 27$ ЗА 10 МИНУТ БЕЗ ПРОБЛЕМ.
только надо быть зарегистрированным в системеPayPal.
ПРОСТО ЗАРАБАТЫВАЕМ НА АМЕРИКАНЦАХ!!!
ЗАРАБОТАТЬ 27$ ЗА 10 МИНУТ! НЕ ВЕРИШЬ?Реально!
Переходим по ссылке: $6.00 Welcome Survey After Free Registration!
Абсолютно бесплатная процедура
Инструкция:
1.Нажимаем Create A Free Account
2.Заполняем поля:
UserName-имя пользователя
Password-пароль 7-15 знаков
First Name-имя
Last Name-фамилия
Email Address-почтовый ящик
Далее вводим цифры буквы, нажимаем кнопку Create A Free Account
Ура!!! Мы зарегистрировались!!!
3.Далее видим таблицу, имеющую такой вид:
Welkome Survey-A6.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A$4.00 Website Evaluation is Available
A February Bonus Website Evaluation is Available
4.Щелкаем по одной из ссылок на этой странице, попадаем на следующую страницу(тут нам радостно сообщают, что нам заплатят 6$ и это займет всего 5-10 минут) и там щелкаем по надписи:
Start Survey now
5.Открываются 2 ссылки и 2 поля, в них надо написать отзыв о сайте на английском языке, кто не силен пишу шаблон-пример:
it is ah excellentsite,l shall advise its all!!!
6.Щелкаете по кнопке внизу»Click to submit»? Переместились на страницу на которой нам сообщают ,что на ваш баланс зачислено 6$. Щелкаем по ссылке «Click Here to go Home and…»
7. и так далее по ссылочкам, и так каждый день…
8. Для вывода денег воспользуйтесь кнопкой «Redeem Money»
ОДИН ДЕНЬ 27$ ЗА 10 МИНУТ БЕЗ ПРОБЛЕМ.
только надо быть зарегистрированным в системеPayPal.
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вверх^
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