Hi,

on your front page you say that "Tixati Contains NO Spyware and NO Ads", but the code to the program is completely closed. There is no way for anyone to compile this program by themselves after checking the code. So, how can you prove that? Those are powerful words, but there is no way for anyone to actually believe you.
This is quite strange - the program is "100% free", and yet you still find it useful to keep the code closed. Why would you do that, if you have nothing to hide from people, and if you are not planning to sell this program? I know what some people might say, "oh, it's just to protect from hacking attacks etc", but that doesn't make any sense because it's just a simple torrent client. The only way it can be hacked is if it was programmed very poorly and with a use of some weird 3rd party code borrowed from god knows where. So, unless it was over-engineered and filled up with bloatware, it shouldn't be dangerous, or prone to attacks in any way. Secondly, there might be someone saying, "oh, it's just to protect intellectual property. Okay, then just patent it, and sell it. Why do you give it for free then, if you care so much about your "property"?

So, what are you hiding? What is in store there for all of those naive people who are downloading all kinds of stuff from all around everywhere?

Kind Regards,
Vasilii Penkin

Tixati is closed source like, Winamp, the best music player of all time, but if you want, you can use any genetic open source music player. Why use Windows the best OS and most used OS of world? Just use Linux for all your things including games and professional photo, music and video processing and edition, or why use Photoshop or even Google Chrome, from the most invasive company of world, and Facebook or Whatapp messenger? All this softwares is closed source. Is your choice, you can jump to qBittorrent, with all his limitations and keep your mind clean.

The burden of proof is on those who accuse...

If you really believed that it's spyware, you wouldn't be asking in the forum run by the people who make it. It's like asking a potential hitman whether he's an undercover police officer. This smells a lot like someone trying to get the source code for his own use by pushing hard on the accusation front.

For the record, no it's not spyware. Go search on reddit and other sites for user reports.

Okay, first of all - Winamp is not the best player in the world, it's actually a total crap compared to the modern open source players.
Second of all, I am not accusing, I am asking questions - a sensible thing to do.
If nobody is there from the dev team to say literally anything then it just feels really weird.
And yes, I did switch to linux, and my airgap windows pc has all the windows apps for media creation and video gaming, but no access to the internet. I am not proud of that, I am not patronizing anyone, I am actually feeling really sad that people have to resort to this stupid stuff in order to retain their basic human rights nowadays.

FGS, you're using a torrent client and you're worried about spyware??  Do you not run other apps to protect from that?  I have tried many others and qBittorent gets bogged down, as does biglybt, and I donated to that bloat.  I wish freeware I donate to would allow me some feature that's a step above but when you put all great features out there, I'm just supporting great code.  Sounds to me you want to recompile with your own name and sell it.

Don't like the app, buy one.

There is plenty of good free, but closed source projects. Not everything needs to be open source. Cool if it is, but it shouldn't be the deciding factor whether something is good. Some easy methods that I can think of to determine if something possibly is or isn't malware:
1. Check executable against various AV engines. Here are the results of latest Win64 executable - https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/da5b395fcd1ef006bc6c6ef070301cae7f229780c82aa090cb3dc4b80df5b36f/detection
Of course AVs can't catch everything and just because everything is reported as clean, does not mean program actually is, but this is a good indication.

2. Check program's reputation around internet. Check various different tech communities. Check news. If this would be a true spyware weird things would be reported.

3. Check network traffic yourself.

As a bonus, all forum threads have to be approved from what I see. If Tixati would be truly nefarious, your question probably wouldn't end up here for others to see.

uTorrent was a good long time, but then thanks to closed source it was sold and made ADware and filled with spyware. Closed software are temporary and susceptible to infiltration from people with big wallets. Use it while it is free like i use it, but always be prepared for losing access to this. Use sandbox just in case.

I think one day it will be sold like it was with uTorrent and then party is over anyway. Closed apps are always in danger to be buyed off by big wallet owners.

Yes, open source is ever better, but the world is not perfect, and want all softwares be open is a complete dream, as I posted before many good softwares is closed source, Winamp, Windows, Adobe softwares etc, then sometime you need pay the price, but, for instance, Ubuntu and qBittorrent is open source, but you know if is really secure? You really check the code line by line before compilation? So, open or closed, anything is 100% secure, but Tixati have "zero" positives on Virustotal today, it would be ignored? Any antivirus is 100% but without doubt VT is a good reference in my opnion, with Norton, Kasper and Bitdefender in the list. Also Tixati is very old, from the same devs of WinMX, have a lot of history, this also need be calculated.

在中国，即使是最严格的防护程序都没有对Tixati发出警报，既然这样，我会默认Tixati是安全的

translate:
In China, even the most rigorous protection procedures have not alerted Tixati. In this case, I will assume that Tixati is safe.

Let's be honest: there is NO reasons to keep a free software closed source. Anyone who says otherwise just doesn't have any idea of what is talking about. Protect any intellectual property?  GPLv3 allows you to publish patent code if you don't to make any money from it, otherwise just sell your software. Prevents people from steal your code? Any GPL license force anyone who wants to redistribute your code to also publish any modification he made under the same license, so you get access to any patch anyone made of your software and you are legally allowed to use said patches. Open source code is less secure? Really? I have really to explain why this is utterly false?
The most absurd thing about Tixati is that is advertised as spyware free, but that is a totally  worthless claim for any closed source program. Also checking for the traffic or the result of any antivirus engine is not near enough: an example? Tixati *could* (I have NO clue to think that this possibility is true except for the suspects I have already wrote about) implement any sort of backdoor that allows anyone who knows about it to take control of the machine in which it is running and no AV or traffic spyware could ever notice until a malicious first command is sent to the machine (the ip and the port of the victim machine can be obtained just looking for seeds/peers of some of the most common torrents and filter by their user agent).
The only reason why I could think Tixati is closed source except for the malicious intents is that it actually use some patented/copyrighted code without the right to do that, and the developer is afraid that if he releases the code the project will be shut down. (for example the dev could be using internal libraries/code of the company he is working for and so, releasing the code, could also lead, in addition to the end of the project, him to be fired)
Whatever the reason is the users still have the right to receive an official response from the dev to these question (Why Tixati is close source? Will ever its code ever be published?) and this answer must be also published of the home page of this site with all the other main information about Tixati.

Out of curiosity I ran strings on the Tixati linux binary. Here are some interesting things I found:



Why does it contain the string "SSH Client" and "SSH Server"? I understand why it includes openssl strings and GCC strings but not SSH. I'm not a programmer but I'd appreciate a good explanation.

I'm the Guest poster from: 2020/10/02 05:34:41 PM

I was told that the SSH string can show up even if the program doesn't act as an SSH client or server. It's because of the libraries Tixati uses. I'm curious to know what library causes that string to show up.

Ok, Tixati is trojan, as Whatsapp, etc, OK, just use the 100% safe qBittorrent, is your choose man, "almost" anyone here have any issue with the tixati closed source. Why VirusTotal with the best antivirus of world, don't show even one detection? Is not possible have all free softwares open source, it's a dream. Just jump out!

Here's another example of someone who doesn't know what is talking about... First of all, Whatsapp is free only in the sense you don't pay it with money, but as you can clearly see reading its eula (and not in tixati's one) they reserve the right to collect and store the data they want and use them as they like, so it's not free, you pay it with the data it collects (as any other social media). Secondly you have no idea how an antivirus works: they are not magic software, they have only two ways for detecting a malicious software. They either scan the files looking for a specific string of bytes that was already marked as malicious by the team of the av (and this protection doesn't work against metamorphic codes that modifies themselves at every time they run), or by heuristically analyzing the runtime behavior of the program while it is executing (and, in this way, they can easily get wrong in both directions, not marking as malicious a malware or the other way around). In both case the malicious code can be detected only if it has been caught doing something wrong (by the av team in order to be added to the virus database, or in real time on your machine if said malicious behavior had been remotely activated and it resulted bad enough for the av heuristic). Note that the run time analysis in not done by all the av software out there (in particular the free versions) and usually it's enabled by default only a light version of the scan because it can be really resource heavy for your machine (and then people complain about their av make their pc slow).

I found this in the Tixati changelog for an old version:
*several fixes for SOCKS4/5 proxy connections, now fully compatible with TOR and SSH tunnels

I'm guessing that might be one reason why the string search for Tixati includes:
tsSH
tsSH
tSSH
lssH
SSH Client
SSH Server

Full disclosure/disclaimer: I am not the developer, an employee or agent of Tixati, Inc. I am only a former or current user of winMX, tixati, fopnu, Super Simple Server and look forward to what may come next.

I was there when the plug was pulled on winMX. It wasn't pretty. But disrupting the cash flow to huge exploitive corporations claiming IP can have serious consequences under the current paradigm. In the USAnglo Empire, the mickey mouse law aka the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the draconian penalties it provides for are quite problematic.

Given that... Some comments here are total bullshit.


Yes let's be really honest. There can be many many reasons.


Says you.


My preference would be to live in a society without private property, without putting "intellectual property" in a cage/vault. But we ain't there yet.

The Dev has spent over 20 years of his life on conceiving and developing the apps he has chosen to make available without charge. Do you provide him with food, clothing, shelter and companionship? If not, why is he obligated to do anything for you for "free"?


Licenses do not force anything. It is merely a thought or a piece of paper. But men with guns do enforce. That is how this system works. By real force.

If someone takes the code, modifies it and incorporates it into a closed project and sells it, how does any license force them not to? It can't. See above. Terms of License are just ignored and how would one detect any such co-opted code had been appropriated. And even if you suspect it, how can you prove it? Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? Take them to court? Who pays for that? And if it is a huge corporation, who will have the money to win in court? Be real.

I worked on several open source projects in past decades. And one of our OS projects was copied, altered and offered only as an online service. They refused to released their altered code. I contacted the Free Software pepps and they said they could do nothing. Since they were not selling or distributing the source code, nothing they could do to stop them from converting it to a paid software as a service.

***


Now we are getting somewhere! You admit to your limited thinking ability.


Well, to be honest, if he is a pirate, I am okay with that. And if that is the only reason you can think of, that reason alone is sufficient to not make the source code public and risk attack by the IP enFORCEers. I'd take that any day over not having access to use the likes of winMX, Tixati, fopnu, SSS and Project Next. Any day!


Seriously? And what gives you/users that "right"? Is that a law written somewhere? What is that right based on?

And who the hell do you think you are to make ANY demands whatsoever on the DEV? You paying his rent? Paying for his time? So he must answer you and it MUST be published on the homepage his website?

I'll be kind, in respect to the DEVs rules for this forum to "keep a civil tone"....

GTFOH with your unfounded challenges to the DEVs integrity and shove your arrogant demands up your A$$.

Have a nice day.

don't get entitled guys, keep it easy, the only one that has a right over this software is the owner, case closed

I am a long Tixati user but only new to forums though. I am not a programmer but by applying common sense I am asking these questions to everyone here(not trolling), aren't open source apps easy to copy? like making several carbon copies of open source apps? Would it not become easy to breach an open-source app and then again distribute it as the same or in different names for malicious practices?

Also, can peers attack my connection/PC while downloading a torrent?


And now to the OP, you can trust Tixati, there are many programmers in my collage who use Tixati.

Why is Tixati closed source? Maybe because the dev/devs don't want to share good/unique codes of it?