What I learned from WebTorrent

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WHAT I LEARNED FROM WEBTORRENT: LESSONS LEARNED FROM STARTING AND RUNNING A P2P OPEN SOURCE PROJECT

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WHAT WE DID RIGHT WHAT WE DID WRONG

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LESSON 1 SHARE YOUR WORK EARLY AND OFTEN

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> Late 2013: Announced WebTorrent > Early 2014: PeerCDN acquired, got job at Yahoo > Mid 2014: Released BitTorrent CLI > Late 2014: Works in the browser, end-to-end > Early 2015: Quit job > Mid 2015: WebTorrent is stable and useful

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LESSON 2 FIND A JOB THAT ALLOWS SIDE PROJECTS

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> 2016: Released WebTorrent Desktop > 2017: Brave Browser bundles WebTorrent > Late 2017: Burnout > Early 2018: WebTorrent Desktop hits 1 million downloads

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WEBTORRENT IN 2019 > Website: 150,000 page views and 65,000 users per month > JS Library: Loaded 5 million times per month > Desktop App: 2 million installs, 100,000 monthly users

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MIT/STANFORD PHILOSOPHY > Simplicity: the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the interface to be simple than the implementation. > Correctness: the design must be correct in all observable aspects. Incorrectness is simply not allowed. > Consistency: the design must not be inconsistent. A design is allowed to be slightly less simple and less complete to avoid inconsistency. Consistency is as important as correctness. > Completeness: the design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases must be covered. Simplicity is not allowed to overly reduce completeness.

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WORSE-IS-BETTER PHILOSOPHY > Simplicity: the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design. > Correctness: the design must be correct in all observable aspects. It is slightly better to be simple than correct. > Consistency: the design must not be overly inconsistent. Consistency can be sacrificed for simplicity in some cases, but it is better to drop those parts of the design that deal with less common circumstances than to introduce either implementational complexity or inconsistency. > Completeness: the design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases should be covered. Completeness can be sacrificed in favor of any other quality. In fact, completeness must be sacrificed whenever implementation simplicity is jeopardized. Consistency can be sacrificed to achieve completeness if simplicity is retained; especially worthless is consistency of interface.

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int fd = open("file.txt", O_WRONLY | O_APPEND); write(fd, "hello, world\n", 13);

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char buf[] = "hello, world\n"; int buf_size = sizeof(buf); int fd = open("file.txt", O_WRONLY | O_APPEND); int bytes_written = 0; while (bytes_written < buf_size) { bytes_written += write(fd, buf + bytes_written, buf_size - bytes_written); }

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WEBRTC IS WORSE-IS-BETTER > Has performance issues > Terrible API > Yet, it enabled P2P on today's web > proved that the dweb is a valid web use case > Makes it easier to argue for better P2P web APIs

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LESSON 3 WORSE IS BETTER

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"The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing."

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$ webtorrent --help Usage: webtorrent [command] Example: webtorrent download "magnet:..." --vlc Commands: download Download a torrent seed Seed a file or folder create Create a .torrent file info Show info for a .torrent file or magnet uri Specify as one of: * magnet uri * http url to .torrent file * filesystem path to .torrent file * info hash (hex string) Options: --airplay Apple TV --chromecast Chromecast

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LESSON 4 PROVIDE VALUE ALONG THE WAY

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WHO IS YOUR IDEAL USER?

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const client = new WebTorrent() client.add('magnet:...', torrent => { // Torrents can contain many files. Let's use the .mp4 file const file = torrent.files.find(file => file.name.endsWith('.mp4')) // Display the file by adding it to the DOM file.appendTo(document.body) })

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npm install render-media

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LESSON 5 SOLVE ONE USE CASE PERFECTLY

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webtorrent_success = js_bet * electron_bet * webrtc_bet

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js_bet = .95 electron_bet = .80 webrtc_bet = .50 webtorrent_success = nodejs_bet * electron_bet * webrtc_bet console.log(webtorrent_success) // 0.38

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LESSON 6 TECHNICAL BETS ARE MULTIPLICATIVE

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LESSON 7 HAVE A SIMPLE PITCH

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HTML – THE ORIGINAL WEB API

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LESSON 8 DESIGN FOR THE LEAST TECHNICAL USERS

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Thanks for the feature request! WebTorrent Desktop values simplicity more than most torrent apps. This sometimes means saying 'No' to good ideas. We try to implement only the most important features that a torrent app needs and make those features as good as possible. We don't want the app to get overloaded with knobs and dials that may only benefit a small percentage of users. That's not to say we won't ever add large new features. We support powerful features like instant streaming, dynamic piece prioritization, web peers (WebRTC), etc. but only when they have a clear benefit to a vast majority of users. See the 80-20 rule. I don't think it makes sense to implement this feature right now. I hope this makes sense!

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LESSON 9 IGNORE THE NERDS

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// App version telemetry.version = config.APP_VERSION // Screen resolution telemetry.screens = getScreenInfo() // OS version and amount of RAM telemetry.system = getSystemInfo() // # of torrents currently active, # in list, total size telemetry.torrentStats = getTorrentStats(state)