TWN 52

[marlowe at antagonism.org]

========================================================
Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News, issue number 52, December 15 2015
=========================================================

Welcome to the Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News (TWN).  Tahoe-LAFS_ is a secure,
distributed storage system. `View TWN on the web`_ *or* `subscribe to TWN`_.
If you would like to view the "new and improved" TWN, complete with pictures;
please take a `look`_.

.. _Tahoe-LAFS: https://tahoe-lafs.org
.. _View TWN on the web:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/TahoeLAFSWeeklyNews
.. _subscribe to TWN:
https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-lafs-weekly-news
.. _look: https://tahoe-lafs.org/~marlowe/TWN52.html

Announcements and News
======================

Test Grid
---------

Paul Rabahy and several other run a test grid. The test grid allows new
users of Tahoe-LAFS to familiarize themselves with the software without
needing to make an investment in the hardware to run a personal grid.
The introducer currently shows ten (10) known nodes with five (5) nodes
currently connected. In November, the grid downloaded approximately
seven (7) GB of data and uploaded one (1) GB of data. We at TWN would
love to see more volunteers helping the grid by running storage nodes
and adding to the documentation regarding the grid. To help, we will be
running a monthly status update on the grid and managing tickets for
items regarding the grid which we would like to see. A special thanks to
Paul and the other volunteers for their wonderful effort.

Nuts and Bolts
==============

Friday
------

A special thanks goes to Zooko who provided these notes.

In attendance: Brian, Leif, David, Daira, me

We talked in depth about Magic Folders usability. The hard parts are
how users can (a) be notified of conflicts when they happen, and (b)
what they can do to resolve conflicts. We didn't exactly solve those
hard parts. We experimented with a certain popular proprietary
insecure alternative that I'm not naming in order to avoid attracting
their attention, but let's just call them by the code-name
"Voldemort".

Anyway, with Voldemort, if you're editing a file and someone else
edits the same file, then one person will get your contents in the
file and the other person will get the contents of the file swapped
out from underneath them. Whoever didn't get their contents in the
file gets their contents in another file created next to the original
file, with a name like "foo.doc-Bob's-conflicted-copy-2015-12-12".

We struggled to come up with a design that would solve conflicts with
more than 2 writers, plus history, garbage collection, expunging
history, conflict resolution, and at the very end agreed that Daira
would lead an effort to just get the minimal thing going that we can
ship. I personally hope that this minimal thing will punt on all
history-maintenance and conflict resolution!

*The Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News is published once a week by The Tahoe-LAFS*

The Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News is published once a week by The Tahoe-LAFS
Software
Foundation, President and Treasurer: Peter Secor |peter|. Scribes: Patrick
"marlowe" McDonald |marlowe|, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn , Editor Emeritus:
|zooko|.
Send your news stories to `marlowe at antagonism.org`_ - submission deadline:
Monday night.

.. _`marlowe at antagonism.org`: mailto:marlowe at antagonism.org
.. |peter| image:: psecor.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: peter
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs
.. |marlowe| image:: marlowe-x75-bw.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: marlowe
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs
.. |zooko| image:: zooko.png
   :height: 35
   :alt: zooko
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs