A new non-free software threat: BitTorrent Live

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/12/4093724/bittorrent-live-streaming-beta-uses-peer-to-peer-for-broadcasting

There seems to be a new technology on the block called BitTorrent Live that they say will make it easier for video providers to serve content by using the BitTorrent protocol. I personally love BitTorrent and I am glad that there are free software clients that can use it.

BitTorrent Live may be another story of another locked down protocol that will force users to install a plugin and due to that nature, it actually holds down the adoption. It would be great if this was open (both protocol and client) so it could be included with any GNU/Linux distro and not just from their site.

If this takes off, it could be another threat to open video playback like Adobe's Flash. Very scary.

I opened up the .deb files offered on the site and it seems to be under a non-free license according to the control file:

Package: btlive
Version: 0.4.11.269
Architecture: i386
Maintainer: Michael Toren <name at domain>
Installed-Size: 1472
Depends: python2.7, sensible-utils
Section: non-free/net
Priority: extra
Homepage: http://live.bittorrent.com/
Description: BitTorrent Live Client
BitTorrent Live is an entirely new P2P protocol designed to distribute
live streaming across the internet without the need for infrastructure
and with a minimum of latency. For more information, please visit