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by J_Darnley 3863 days ago
I already have many choices of client. All of which can correctly interact with each other. A new client come along and can't do that. Suddenly every other client is broken. Please, this client is broken and needs fixing.
2 comments

>Please, this client is broken and needs fixing

Good thing it's open source then.

They interact with each other because of BEPs. This client is a prototype and if it's successful you'll have a whole new source of peers.

And before PeX was a BEP, before Vuze had a Mainline DHT plugin, it didn't interact with some clients either. Hell, even DHT [1] had to go through the same BEP process. Do you expect all software to start out complete?

1: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html

By that logic though you can say anything is BitTorrent if it gets a BEP. IPX/SPX networking only? No problem, just needs a BEP! ;) You must admit it's certainly different to start off with a completely incompatible client, vs just a new feature. (I do wish WebTorrent well though.)

Do you have any insight into the BT dev community as to whether WebTorrent is likely to be picked up in other clients?

Well yeah, someone could propose IPX/SPX but it'd be unlikely to to get picked up.

I have no special insight but I think this is a really cool idea. What I do know is if they don't put up a BEP then it won't go anywhere.

> Do you expect all software to start out complete?

No. I would expect a new torrent client to start with tracker announces and then peer communication.

WebTorrent isn't trying to embrace and extend BitTorrent. It is impossible for code running in a browser to speak any of the existing BitTorrent protocols, so as a last resort they are running over WebRTC.