XTorrent is another filesharing application for Mac OS X. It is developed by the author of Acquisition – the state-of-the-art filesharing app for Mac.

As I recognised it was from the same author as Acquisition thoughts were flashing into my mind:
- Did he really write a Bittorrent client from the scratch?
- No he wouldn’t. So which open source app did he choose to build upon then?

The answer was easy: Transmission. Of course all of you Q users know Transmission, it’s built right into Q for downloading new Guest PCs from FreeOSZoo. No mentioning of this neither on the product website nor on his blog. Only mentioning in the license agreement if you scroll down… “Xtorrent contains source code from libtransmission [...]“ and on the about pane:

No linking to the website of Transmission project, only a slight hint to what the software is based upon.. “[...] uses code from the libtransmission project.” – does he want to hide something? It seems indeed he wants to promote it as being his work, as writing on his blog entry announcing it: “Xtorrent is an advanced torrent client that has been in development for several months.”

He might be legally right, but one could ask if this is morally ok?! He could have just helped the Transmission team making a better Graphical User Interface (GUI) instead of making money of it. Although I have to admit that his GUI work is really nice, I don’t think many people will pay for it. Yes, it’s free for the moment as it is Beta software, but you know him, he will charge for it soon. :-/

What’s the moral? Use free Transmission Bittorrent client and support the original authors (Or, as to say with David’s words: “Support people, not corporations.”***

*** I’m not quite sure if I quote him right from within early Acquisition releases, correct me if I’m wrong.

Update: It seems that he uses libtransmission in Acquisition also.

cordney*