ΜTorrent

[编辑] 大小

µTorrent is shipped as a single stand-alone compressed executable file, and does not require installation, though an installer is available for trivial installation. Small executable size is achieved by avoiding the use of many libraries, notably the C++ standard library and stream facilities, and creating substitutes written specifically for the program. The executable is then compressed to roughly half of its compiled and linked size using PECompact2.

Version	Build	Release Date	Size
1.0			77 KiB
1.1.7.2	293	2005-10-22	98 KiB
1.2.2	345	2005-11-25	107 KiB
1.3	364	2005-12-10	115 KiB
1.4	402	2006-01-11	130 KiB
1.5	437	2006-03-08	155 KiB
1.6.1	490	2007-02-15	173 KiB
1.7.1	3360	2007-07-12	218 KiB

[编辑] Development

Original development was performed by Ludvig Strigeus ("ludde", from Sweden), the creator of µTorrent. Serge Paquet ("vurlix", from Canada) acted as release coordinator, and had intended to work on Linux and Mac OS X ports. He maintained the µTorrent website and forum up until the end 2005, but is no longer affiliated with µTorrent.

Development after the purchase by BitTorrent is performed by developers Greg Hazel ("alus"), Arvid Norberg ("arvid"), "CodeRed", Richard Choi ("rchoi") and Ryan Norton ("RyanNorton") at BitTorrent Inc. Strigeus remains as a technical consultant.

Other tasks continue to be performed by ongoing contributors. Giancarlo Martínez ("Firon", from Puerto Rico) maintains the µTorrent forums and FAQ. Timothy Su ("ignorantcow", from Malaysia) is the current website designer. Carsten Niebuhr ("Directrix", from Germany) developed and maintains the µTorrent Web User Interface.

[编辑] History

[编辑] Early development

In general discontent with bloatware, Serge Paquet suggested to Ludvig Strigeus that he make a small, yet efficient, BitTorrent client. Strigeus began to conceptualize the plans for the program's development, which, at the time, did not include making the client feature-rich. After initially working on it for about a month during the autumn of 2004 (the first build is dated October 17, 2004), mostly during his free time before or after work, Strigeus ceased coding µTorrent for a year. He resumed work on September 15, 2005, and three days later, the first public release (version 1.1 beta) was made available.

[编辑] Advertisements

In early versions, Strigeus had built in a web redirection via http://nanotorrent.com/ for search queries entered through the search bar that displayed advertisements in a frame on the web browser. Some users thought this suspicious because tracking could be implemented by recording the ip addresses of those downloading/receiving the advertisements, and the search functionality could easily be used to track user queries through whichever web-interface the client is going through to execute the search. After a short trial period, the advertising was disabled, mitigating possible concerns. Here is a quotation from the official forum administrator "Firon":

There's no data collected, it's just used to display ads for certain keywords ... It was used as a domain instead of being integrated into the client so the ad thing could be turned off later easily if the response to it was negative. Also, it may be used in the future to provide a "search all sites" feature.[6]

A later version of the software has, instead of ads, a "search all sites" feature, which is a keyword-based search bar that delivers listings of torrent files at different trackers. A frame at the top displays advertisements (server-side) in the browser when the search function is used. In version 1.5, no ads are present in the program itself.

As of build 463, a redirect bypass feature became available in the Advanced options.

[编辑] PeerFactor SARL

On March 4, 2006, PeerFactor SARL^[7] announced the signing of a six-month contract with Strigeus for the development of "new content distribution applications on the Web."^[8] PeerFactor SARL is a relatively new company formed by former employees of PeerFactor, which was a subsidiary of the French anti-piracy organization Retspan.

Ludde stated that his coding for PeerFactor SARL was to use his expertise at optimization of the BitTorrent protocol to create a .dll which PeerFactor SARL intended to use as part of a distribution platform for files in a corporate setting.^[9] At the time there was some speculation that Ludde may not be acting in the best interests of the Bittorrent community. However no evidence of perceived wrong doing came to light and the program is now under the control of BitTorrent, Inc.

[编辑] Purchase by BitTorrent, Inc.

On December 7, 2006, µTorrent was purchased by BitTorrent, Inc., as it was announced on their official forum.^[1] µTorrent will continue to have its own website and community for now, and the µTorrent code base will remain closed source. Ludvig Strigeus, the writer of µTorrent, will serve as a technical consultant, but BitTorrent, Inc. will do the majority of the development work.^[10]

[编辑] Pronunciation

The author of µTorrent wrote in 2005, "I usually say 'you torrent' because it looks like a u", and offered "microtorrent" and "mytorrent" as candidate pronunciations.^[11] The symbol μ, which is actually the small Greek letter Mu, stands for the SI prefix "micro" meaning one one-millionth and refers to the program's small footprint.

[编辑] Easter eggs

Two Easter eggs are present in the software. In the About subsection of Help, Clicking the µTorrent logo will play a Deep Note-like sound effect. Pressing the letter "t" on the keyboard when viewing the About subsection of Help will start a game of Tetris, called µTris. In addition, pressing the letter "p" will pause µTris with a filled game of colorful patterns.

[编辑] See also

• Comparison of BitTorrent software

[编辑] References