BitTorrent Sync Beta API Now Available to Developers | Hacker News Reader

BitTorrent Sync Beta API Now Available to Developers

blog.bittorrent.com

59 pointsjimbobob33 comments

I really like the project and I would love to use it for https://cloudfleet.io (shameless plug), but ... show us the source, bittorrent!

However I am hopeful that some other projects will come up (maybe based on http://www.gocircuit.org/ ) that will give us the same functionality with a verifiable code base.

The best open source alternative I've heard of so far is clearskies (https://github.com/jewel/clearskies). The implementation isn't complete yet, but it started right with a clear, open protocol definition based on standard technologies.

I've been waiting for some free time to write a client myself - go circuit looks very interesting for that!

Oh, I didn't know that - thank you. High upon my list of things to try is also http://www.seafile.com/en/home/.

Thanks for mentioning ClearSkies. I have only mentioned it in a comment thrice on hacker news when it seemed appropriate (and pretty much nowhere else), and it's amazing to see someone else bring it up!

We've been working to get it to a point where it'd be ready for a "Show HN". We finally got connection encryption working last night, so hopefully that will be in a week or two.

The Cryptosphere design is promising but progress is slow.

Without source it just can't be trusted.

Especially after Bittorrent started distributing malware with uTorrent updates.

thanks for mentioning that. never knew that uTorrent is actually developed by Bittorrent Inc. That makes it indeed very hard to trust the BT Sync service

uTorrent was one of the best (if not the best) engineered Windows programs. It was small, fast and really really well thought out. Just beautiful. I would be so damn proud if it were my creation :)

Then BitTorrent came along and bought it. On one hand I'm really happy for the dev, but on the other hand it was the start of a steady decline of both the quality and the ethics. BT does some really interesting stuff, but I really wish they wouldn't pee on their own parade with all those uT ads and bundling.

I completely agree. Any potential benefits are far outweighed by the project not being open sourced.

"Our goal is to build a sharing tool that lets you move big files, and big ideas, freely. Without surveillance." [1]

Unfortunately without proof this sort of marketing sounds like "give us all of your data, we won't look, we promise."

... I may be a little cynical because I like the idea of decentralized sync.

[1] http://blog.bittorrent.com/2013/11/05/introducing-bittorrent...

Has there been any kind of official response from Bittorrent about this?

Are they planning on open sourcing the code at a later date or have they simply kept quiet this whole time, hoping the issue will go away?

I doubt it. Bram saw Bittorrent get hugely successful but didn't see corresponding financial returns. He probably attributes that to being open source and trying to avoid it happening again.

They yesterday claimed they would make it public once it was stable. http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/24050-i-apologize-ahead-of...

Heck, even with just an open protocol, I'd trust the threat of competition to keep bittorrent inc behaving; using their client most of the time and an open source one for really paranoid use-cases. As it is now, they get nothing, and I wait for clearskies or something to become usable instead :(

fucking illuminati crusading against internet users !

Does anyone know if BitTorrent uses its servers to facilitate finding the endpoints of the shared secrets? Or is it done using DHT hackery, with no centralized server involvement?

See http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/technology under "Peer Discovery"

SOURCE OR GTFO

If I am reading this right, the API supports creating encrypted-only peers, they can hold your data without knowing the decryption key. My interest has just been piqued.

Testing this out, looks like generating secret key through API generates three keys, encrypted, readonly, and readwrite, and I can see when I plug in an encrypted key to one node, I can see encrypted blobs are being populated from other nodes of all types, including other "encrypted" node.

So according to the terms you're unable to resell the service... so does that mean you can't build a paid SaaS service which uses this as a distribution mechanism for files?

(Disclaimer: I work on Sync at BitTorrent) Sorry if that language is confusing - we'll try to clean it up. If you build a SaaS product using Sync that's totally fine and you're welcome to sell your service. What we're trying to prevent is people who try to sell something that we are giving away for free. Happy to try to clarify if there are any other questions.

Since you are already answering questions: when can we expect BitTorrent Inc to publish the protocol or at least add the option to run and use your own tracker for syncing?

SyncApp is wonderful but I don't feel comfortable with it being closed source and your infrastructure being used. Thus I use it only to transfer files between computers I wouldn't mind sharing with the world.

Thanks for the question and feedback. First, keep in mind that Sync is a beta product and we’re still actively building it, things are evolving every day. We’re investing a ton of time and money into it, there’s a ton of great stuff happening and more coming.

As for your question, yes, we're planning on releasing a version that will allow for you to use your own tracker - unfortunately we don’t have timing yet for that but it is in the works. We're working hard to make a great product and to support everyone as best we can.

Also, we do have a dedicated forum for the Sync API http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/106-developers/ in case you have other questions/comments. Thanks!

Why do I have to register in order to read the API docs? So annoying..

You shouldn't need to register to view them. There's a link under the Register button:

http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/developers/api

Does anyone know if by using BitTorrent sync, my internet connection will start to be used by other strangers as an intermediary node (to help them traverse firewalls?)

What's are the protocol differences against libtorrent capabilities? I assume it can sync differences between files, can libtorrent do that?

If the files haven't changed size, you don't need explicit support, just put the files in the right directory and let libtorrent treat them like damaged/incomplete downloads (it'll checksum the blocks and download the changes).

Dunno if it works for files of different sizes, though. It probably won't, since the blocks won't be in the same positions.

Does anyone know which algorithm they use underneath for duplication detection/delta encoding? Is it rsync or something else?

Is anyone using this for application deployment?

Expect some coming very soon. Any requests?

twitter apparently uses murder: https://blog.twitter.com/2010/murder-fast-datacenter-code-de...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com