Robert,
> Help me out here... what's your perceived difference between kazaa and
> bittorrent?
1) Bittorrent provides a secure way to certify downloaded content an prevent
viruses from being inserted in the distribution. The method offered through
the Kazaa Gold service at the time of its introduction was believed to be
easily circumvented.
2) At the time we made the decision, Kazaa was bundling spyware with thier
client. I don't know whether they do now.
3) Also that season, Kazaa had been found to be a virus vector for Windows
machines due to poor security code and they got a lot of (deserved) negative
publicity for this. This issue has since been fixed.
4) Finally, Kazaa is used by some people to distribute digital content in
violation of the owner's copyrights. The OOo steering committee felt that
using Kazaa to distribute OpenOffice.org would create an association in the
public mind between Open Source and music piracy; a perception that Microsoft
was doing their best to encourage as well.
Bittorrent has none of these issues. Were we to consider using Kazaa to
distribute PostgreSQL (unlikely, since Kazaa is Windows-only) we would need
to consider these issues carefully as well. And keep in mind that we did
*not* reject Kazaa's offer outright, since Kazaa made the offer in good faith
and they and some of our community though that it would be good for both OOo
and Kazaa. As I recall, we debated it for the better part of a month.
Anyway, it sounds like I'm alone in my distrust of Paypal, so maybe we should
drop it?
--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco
