The BitTorrent story

If you enjoyed the graphing calculator story, you'll enjoy this story about Bram Cohen and the technology he developed, which was eventually called BitTorrent.  The two stories have, among other things, this aspect in common: a person with a great desire to create something both useful and elegant, a person whose work was driven by their own person technical standards not work demands, and a person repeatedly frustrated by an employer who was not able to channel this drive and technical competence into real product development.

Like many geeks in the '90s, Cohen coded for a parade of dotcoms that went bust without a product ever seeing daylight. He decided his next project would be something he wrote for himself in his own way, and gave away free. "You get so tired of having your work die," he says. "I just wanted to make something that people would actually use."

Cohen was always interested in file-sharing. His last job was with MojoNation, a project based in Mountain View, California, that tried to create a "distributed data haven." A MojoNation user who wanted to keep a file safe from prying eyes could break it into chunks, encrypt the pieces, and store them on the millions of computers belonging to people who, theoretically, would be running the software worldwide. Too complicated for easy use, it expired like the other startups Cohen was part of. But it gave him an idea: Breaking a big file into tiny pieces might be a terrific way to swap it online.

One of the most innovative and useful features of the BitTorrent approach was the "virtuous cycle" it creates in file downloads:

Paradoxically, BitTorrent's architecture means that the more popular the file is the faster it downloads - because more people are pitching in. Better yet, it's a virtuous cycle. Users download and share at the same time; as soon as someone receives even a single piece of Fokkers, his computer immediately begins offering it to others. The more files you're willing to share, the faster any individual torrent downloads to your computer. This prevents people from leeching, a classic P2P problem in which too many people download files and refuse to upload, creating a drain on the system. "Give and ye shall receive" became Cohen's motto, which he printed on T-shirts and sold to supporters.

Read the whole article to get an interesting insight into file sharing, new product development and the role of the "creative" people in Hollywood.