BitComet Reaches Milestone with v1.00
Almost five years after the initial release went public, BitComet v1.00 has arrived. BitComet has come a long way, and despite its (unfounded) image as the BitTorrent bully, it remains popular among BitTorrent users.
The first version of BitComet was released on August 6 2003. Now, nearly five years later, v1.00 of the client has finally gone public.
BitComet used to be the most used BitTorrent client, but its popularity has decreased over the years, and it is now in fourth place after uTorrent, BitTorrent mainline and Azureus. The decline in popularity is, among other things, due to the negative press BitComet has received over the years.
It all started in 2005 when BitComet was banned from several private BitTorrent trackers for ignoring the “private flag”. Even though this issue was resolved relatively quickly, the image of BitComet was permanently damaged.
In the years to come, more and more horror stories popped up, from spreading junk data, to disobeying BitTorrent rules. Last year, BitTornado developer Shad0w even went as far as banning all BitComet users, because the client allegedly exploited super-seeds.
Last year however, Robb Topolski, a networking and protocol expert with more than 25 years of experience researched most of the claims against BitComet. He concluded that the client was not best suited for initial seeding tasks but at the same time refuted all other claims.
“BitComet is a worthy download client, providing some advantageous features not found in any other current BitTorrent client. Some of these features are confusing and are poorly implemented, but they are not detrimental to a BitTorrent swarm, nor do they take unfair advantage,” Topolski wrote.
“None of the typical accusations against BitComet, those that are provided as reasons for trackers or users to “Ban BitComet,” have held true. It is my professional opinion that the bans of BitComet are based on misunderstandings and falsehoods, and not on good data,” he added.
People should of course decide for themselves what they think of BitComet, but one thing is hard to deny. The client has turned into one of the most feature rich clients, currently available in 43 languages, which still has a great appeal to beginning and intermediate BitTorrent users.
