BoingBoing got to it first. (This is not surprising. They basically either are, or know in as in face-to-face-know, many EFF, and Creative Commons, and probably Downhill Battle heavies)

BlogTorrent is hella cool. If you have a PHP enabled webserver, which isn't too hard to find, or make happen (especially if you Got Root, apt-get install php4) just download and install, and bam. Distributed filesharing HOOOOO!

I haven't had a chance to really browse the code-base to see how reasonable it is. Lets face it, large swathes of PHP code out there is an an abomination, and I have written a few doozies myself. But maybe I'll get a chance to take a peek, and report back.

The cool thing about BlogTorrent is that it also proves a GUI front end for windows users. They have plans to make a mac version go. And someone out there will make a Linux version I'm sure.

Enough already, what does it do?

Just click on upload, and uploading a file to the tracker is as easy as that. Clickity Click Barba Trick! Downloading is even easier. There is of course, .torrents available, but there is also an easy download for the torrent-challenged-unwashed-proletariat-masses.

It isn't the fastest script in the world, but it is workable. The biggest problem is that installing it isn't as easy as one might think. I tried just installing it and going, but ran into problems when trying to execute the windows installer portion of the thing. This could be caused by a separate bandwidth issue I was running into earlier.

This is just so freaking hella-cool. This is open source at its finest. A bunch of scripts in one open source language (Bit Torrent / Python, right?) installed via an open source installer (NSIS), that connects to an open source webserver (apache, but really, it doesn't have to be), with another open source language helping the serving (php). Standing on the shoulders of a giant, on the shoulders of a giant, on the shoulders ... (An infinite regress of acrobatic behemoths!)

It would be cool to have semi-open sharing communities, that is, groups of artists et. all having their work available on a BlogTorrent. The collaborative power is really quite something. And of course, who says it all has to be on the level...

I have an example site up for all-ya-all. Here it is. Don't horribly abuse it.

(On a different note: I can't spell "seperate", but I can spell "proletariat")