Was just casually (well ok maybe it’s more compulsive than that) browsing HN and was pleasantly surprised to find tus on the front page. I’m one of the core contributors and happy to answer questions. Although it’s late here so it may take a few hours while I’m asleep :)
People ask that more yes, on the surface they have a lot in common. Both can be used to transmit huge files, both can chunk files up and only transmit remaining parts, and pick up and resume at a later point in time, and (in case of tus optionally with the Concat extension) send these chunks simultaneously.
Tus however works as a thin layer on top of HTTP, so it’s easy to drop into existing web sites/load balancers/auth proxies/firewalls. BitTorrent ports are often closed off on airports/hotels/corporate networks. But websites work. And if you can access a website, you will be able to upload files to it with tus.
Another difference is that tus assumes classic client/server roles. The client uploads to the server. Downloading is done via your regular http stack and not facilitated by tus. BitTorrent facilitates both uploading and downloading in single clients. It is more peer-to-peer and decentralized in nature, where tus clients typically upload to a central point (like: many video producers upload to Vimeo. Not very contrived as Vimeo adopted tus).
There are more differences (Discoverability, trackers, pull vs push, pulling from many peers at once) but the comment is getting very long so I hope this already helps a bit :)
