[tahoe-dev] announcing allmydata.org "Tahoe" v0.9

[zooko]

ANNOUNCING: Allmydata.org "Tahoe" version 0.9

We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.9 of allmydata.org
"Tahoe".

Allmydata.org "Tahoe" is a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant
filesystem.  All of the source code is available under a Free
Software, Open Source licence (or two).

This filesystem is encrypted and distributed over multiple peers in
such a way that it continues to work correctlly even when some of the
peers are unavailable, malfunctioning, or malicious.

A one-page explanation of the novel properties of this filesystem is
visible at:

http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html


This is the successor to Allmydata.org "Tahoe" v0.8, which was
released February 15, 2008 [1].  This release is backwards-compatible
with v0.8.

This is a major release of allmydata.org "Tahoe" -- the first release
which is considered stable and functional enough to serve as a
permanent store of valuable data.  New versions of Tahoe are expected
to maintain backwards compatibility with this version for the
forseeable future.

This release of allmydata.org "Tahoe" will form the basis of the next
consumer backup product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com .

This release adds extensive "visibility into the grid" -- the web user
interface now shows detailed information about the nodes comprising
the grid and fine-grained statistics about the time and space used for
the storage and retrieval operations.


Since v0.8 we've made the following changes:

  * Added user-friendly Windows application and package, thanks
    especially to Rob Kinninmont and Mike Booker (tickets #195, 242,
    243, 321, 335).

  * Display information about uploads and downloads (ticket #39).

  * Improve performance (including tickets #304, 321).

  * Improve packaging and testing (including ticket #145).

  * Add even more extensive automated tests (including ticket #207).

  * Updated documentation.


WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

With Tahoe, you can distribute your filesystem across a set of
computers, such that if some of the computers fail or turn out to be
malicious, the filesystem continues to work from the remaining
computers.  You can also share your files with other users, using a
strongly encrypted, capability-based access control scheme.

This release is targeted at hackers and smart users who are willing to
use a web user interface, a command-line user interface, or a FUSE
interface.  (Or a RESTful API.  Just telnet to localhost and type HTTP
requests to get started.)

Because this software is the product of less than a year and a half of
active development, we do not categorically recommend it for the
storage of data which is extremely confidential or precious.  However,
we believe that the combination of erasure coding and careful
engineering makes the use of this software a much safer alternative
than common alternatives, such as RAID or traditional backup onto a
remote hard drive, removable drive, or tape.

This software comes with extensive unit tests [2], and there are no
known security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data
integrity.  (For all currently known security issues please see the
Security web page: [3].)

This release of Tahoe is suitable for the "friendnet" use case [4] --
it is easy to create a filesystem spread over the computers of you and
your friends so that you can share files and disk space with one
another.


LICENCE

You may use this package under the GNU General Public License, version
2 or, at your option, any later version.  See the file "COPYING.GPL"
for the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.

You may use this package under the Transitive Grace Period Public
Licence, version 1.0.  The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence says
that you may distribute proprietary derived works of Tahoe without
releasing the source code of that derived work for up to twelve
months, after which time you are obligated to release the source code
of the derived work under the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence.
See the file "COPYING.TGPPL.html" for the terms of the Transitive
Grace Period Public Licence, version 1.0.

(You may choose to use this package under the terms of either licence,
at your option.)


INSTALLATION

Tahoe works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Cygwin, and Solaris.  For
installation instructions please see "docs/install.html" [5].


HACKING AND COMMUNITY

Please join us on the mailing list [6] to discuss uses of Tahoe.
Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are gratefully accepted -- the
RoadMap page [7] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and
CREDITS [8] lists the names of people who've contributed to the
project.  The wiki Dev page [9] contains resources for hackers.


SPONSORSHIP

Tahoe is sponsored by Allmydata, Inc. [10], a provider of consumer
backup services.  Allmydata, Inc. contributes hardware, software,
ideas, bug reports, suggestions, demands, and money (employing several
allmydata.org Tahoe hackers and allowing them to spend part of their
work time on the next-generation, free-software project).  We are
eternally grateful!


Zooko O'Whielacronx
on behalf of the allmydata.org team
March 13, 2008
Boulder, Colorado, USA

[1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=2183
[2] http://allmydata.org/tahoe-figleaf/current/
[3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Security
[4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases
[5] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html
[6] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
[7] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap
[8] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=2307
[9] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
[10] http://allmydata.com

P.S.  Someday, people might search for some of the earliest  
occurrences of the
name "LAUGFS", which stands for "Least AUthority Grid FileSystem".   
Hello,
searchers from the future!