Two weeks ago, we outlined the release schedule of the Gazelle source code, in relatively intricate detail. The plan was to release RC1 via controlled SVN access, and do a public source code release in a month or two.
Unfortunately, even the best laid plans often have to be scrapped on the fly, and replaced with more fitting alternatives. The overwhelming number of programmers requesting pre-pre-release SVN accounts has led to a great deal of people looking over the current code already, and the prospect of handing out hundreds more RC1 SVN accounts just to have the code leak onto RapidShare in a week was just too daunting for us to be bothered, and we scrapped that plan.
As of today, the Gazelle source code is publicly available to anyone who wishes to use it, under an in-house modified derivative of the GPL.
Currently, the only way to access the code is via SVN. The SVN address is
http://svn.what.cd/repos/project_gazelle, and the username and password are both gazelle.
We would like to remind everyone that this is not the final 1.0 release - it is just the first release candidate. There are a number of changes that are on the list of things to be changed before 1.0. The most significant of these is the tracker - currently, gazelle uses xbtt as its tracker backend. We're in the final stages of coding a new tracker from scratch, dubbed "ocelot". Once ocelot is finished, there will be some modifications to the database schema.
Finally, we'd like to put in a word about security. There is a reason that we're the only high profile tracker to release their code in years - it is amongst the most dangerous things that any site can do, and the great number of enemies we've amassed during our 10 months of existance increases the risk all the more. We recognize the dangers involved, and have chosen to release the code nonetheless, because we believe that the BitTorrent community is more important than any individual site in it. We believe that the pros will outweigh the cons in this decision, and hope that people will use the code for constructive purposes, rather than childish hacking attempts. If our hopes are proven to be misguided and people take advantage of our generosity to exploit hidden little vulnerabilities in the codebase, we will simply remove the public SVN and stop maintaining the codebase outside of our site.
If you find a bug, please report it to a What.CD sysop in #gazelle on irc.what-network.net. The same channel can be used for asking questions and chatting about the codebase.
We hope to see a bunch of little baby gazelles popping up soon. Good luck.
