switching to torrents as a main distribution medium for gatog

[Sulaiman Mustafa]

how about it? instead of uploading content to a centralized host, we can
use torrents as a main medium for downloads. this will raise
availability (performance-wise) for users and will lessen our dependence
on 3rd party hosts. files will be hosted locally on several servers.
note that this method does not require a static ip or domain to work.

there are numerous public trackers out there that would do the job
wonderfully (http://publicbt.com/ and http://openbittorrent.com/ to name
a few). alternative destribution methods (direct downloads) might be
provided in the future, but for now this seems to be the best option.

I'll discuss this on other forums, but since this will impact the way we
work, this should be discussed here first.

[Mohammed Mustafa]

not a bad idea, but seems wrong to me to use bittorrent just to download simple stuff!

[Sulaiman Mustafa]

the reason here is availability more than efficiency. even if our site goes down, the downloads will still be available. how many times have you tried to download something only to find that it is no longer available on-line?  torrents would solve this problem since the file is not tied down to one location. this is especially true if we form alliances with others to seed our torrents. also, having more than one physical server will decrease the chances of a black out.

since we're using public trackers, notability is not an issue.

If we switch to torrents, ALL GATOG PUBLICATIONS WILL BE DISTRIBUTED THROUGH TORRENTS WITHOUT EXCEPTION. this is important to keep download-able material manageable. so i want to be sure that you understand this before I start working on the switch. these include (not limited to):
    - software releases
    - documentation
and any other packaged content.

[Mohammed Mustafa]

seems okay to me

[Sulaiman Mustafa]

just to make sure one last time:
if we proceed with this, no normal download links will be provided by our team. only bit-torrent links. okay?
         [yes]  [not sure]

[Mohammed A. Mustafa]

[not sure]

because not all people have bittorrents and not all computers have a
bittorrent client, especially public PCs(KU)!! It would be better if we
can have both of course, but I'm not saying that this is a bad idea at
all! If only there is such a site that offers free online bittorrent
client so that one can download them as direct downloads, that would be
the awesomeness and i'd definitely go[yes]

[Sulaiman Mustafa]

"if only"...
bitlet.org

[Mohammed A. Mustafa]

yea found it, but firefox froze so i couldnt try it at that moment, so
[yes] :D