bittorrent in core? what frontend?

[Paul A Houle]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> I'm sorry that BT is so difficult to use that you have to futz with
> firewalls.  But I don't feel that it is Fedora's place to allow
> applications to poke holes in firewalls not even on the system.
>   
    It's not just a question about BT,  but rather a question about what 
direction the internet is going.

    IPV6 adoption looks stalled,  and on some days it seems that it will 
never happen.  (Are ~you~ going to put ~your~ web server on an IP 
address that 1% of the world to see?)

    One immediate answer to the IP shortage is NAT,  which works fine 
with certain sorts of protocols (http) but has made other protocols 
(ftp) obsolete or unworkable.

    If NAT's a fact of life,  we ought to start thinking about how to 
make our software work in the new age.  CPAN,  for instance,  is a piece 
of software that "just doesn't work" in internet 2005 because of  ftp 
dependence-- most of the machines I run it on have some serious issues 
with firewalls,  which can sometimes be worked around by setting some 
obscure settings to enable passive mode,  and sometimes requires work on 
the machine-level firewall and sometimes the corporate firewall.

    My home network is designed entirely around the needs of devices 
that "just work" -- the assumption is that people are going to use PDA's 
and internet tablets,  and that you can plug in something like an 
Xbox360 or an internet stereo.  For any problems it may have,  UPnP is a 
part of making that possible -- of making internet a mainstream 
phenomenon,  not just something for geeks.