A Fortune for Bram
In my initial
write-up on the Web2.0 Conference, I was going to discuss the talk
given by Bram Cohen, inventor of BitTorrent,
but decided not to since I found it somewhat difficult to describe and
did not take many
notes. He just got up on stage and, with no slides or presentation,
gave a dissertation on "What is the Internet Operating
System?". He described the various parts of a traditional OS
(kernel, drivers, file system, etc.) and what he felt were the Internet
OS
equivalents. It was interesting and a bit curious too.
I've followed BitTorrent for a while now and am in fact taking a
hard look at how it (or similar technology, perhaps even something
built with JXTA) might be used as a
P2P option for our download
customers. The "ice was broken" on the OpenSolaris site, where
BitTorrent is offered as a download option. This is great trail
blazing but the path isn't so clear for our non-open source downloads,
since there are different licensing restrictions on redistribution (and
a few other issues -- I can post more on this investigation in the
future). The main thing is I did enjoy seeing and hearing Bram up
close, having followed his work, and he was certainly enigmatic and
geeky (not meant in a bad way, of course!).
Bram recently raised a
bunch of venture capital, and lo and behold all of a sudden there's
a big write-up I just saw in (of all places) Fortune Magazine.
Amazing what a few mil in VC $$$ will accomplish! So (finally), the
main point of this post is to
recommend the article, as it offered great personal insight
into Bram and helps explain who he is. If you're a fan of his work
(like I am), it's a worthwhile read: "BITTORRENT:
THE GREAT DISRUPTER -- Bram
Cohen’s BitTorrent software made it a cinch to pirate films on the
Internet. So why is Hollywood on his side? By Daniel Roth."
Bram's obviously extremely gifted, and I wish him lots of success and look forward to see what else he comes up with in the future!
