[tahoe-dev] draft release announcement for Tahoe 1.4.0

Mon Apr 6 20:45:57 PDT 2009

Looks good - allmydata.com does still provide servers, colo space, and 
bandwidth ...

Ps

zooko wrote:
> Folks:
> 
> The next release announcement will look something like this.
> 
> --Zooko
> 
> DRAFT announcement for:
> ANNOUNCING allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem, v1.4
> 
> The allmydata.org team is pleased to announce the release of version
> 1.4.0 of "Tahoe", the Lightweight-Authorization Filesystem. This is the
> first release of Tahoe which was created solely as a labor of love by
> volunteers -- it is no longer funded by allmydata.com (see [1] for
> details).
> 
> Tahoe-LAFS is a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem.  All
> of the source code is available under Free Software, Open Source
> licences.
> 
> This filesystem is distributed over multiple peers in such a way the
> filesystem continues to operate correctly even when some of the peers
> are unavailable, malfunctioning, or malicious. Users can easily share
> files with each other, using a simple and flexible access control
> scheme.
> 
> Here is the one-page explanation of Tahoe's unique security and
> fault-tolerance properties:
> 
> http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html
> 
> This is the successor to Tahoe-LAFS v1.3, which was released February
> 13, 2009 [2].  This is a major new release, adding garbage collection
> XXX a repairer, an efficient backup command, support for large files,
> an (S)FTP server, and much more.
> 
> See the NEWS file [3] and the known_issues.txt file [4] for more
> information.
> 
> Besides the Tahoe core, a crop of related projects have sprung up,
> including Tahoe frontends for Windows and Macintosh, two front-ends
> written in JavaScript, a Tahoe plugin for duplicity, a Tahoe plugin for
> TiddlyWiki, a project to create a new backup tool, CIFS/SMB
> integration, an iPhone app, and three incomplete Tahoe frontends for
> FUSE. See the Related Projects page on the wiki: [5].
> 
> 
> COMPATIBILITY
> 
> Tahoe v1.4 is fully compatible with the version 1 series of Tahoe.
> 
> Files written by v1.4 clients can be read by clients of all versions
> back to v1.0.  (Unless the file is too large.  Files greater than about
> 12 GiB -- depending on the configuration -- can't be read by clients of
> v1.2 or older).
> 
> v1.4 clients can read files produced by clients of all versions since
> v1.0.  v1.4 servers can serve clients of all versions back to v1.0 and
> v1.4 clients can use servers of all versions back to v1.0 (but can't
> upload large files to them).
> 
> This is the fifth release in the version 1 series.  We believe that
> this version of Tahoe is stable enough to use as a permanent store of
> valuable data.  The version 1 series of Tahoe will be actively
> supported and maintained for the forseeable future, and future versions
> of Tahoe will retain the ability to read files and directories produced
> by Tahoe v1 for the forseeable future.
> 
> The version 1 branch of Tahoe is the basis of the consumer backup
> product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com .
> 
> 
> 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 entire filesystem continues to be available, thanks to
> the remaining computers.  You can also share your files with other
> users, using a simple and flexible access control scheme.
> 
> Because this software is new, we do not categorically recommend it as
> the sole repository of data which is extremely confidential or
> precious.  However, we believe that erasure coding, strong encryption,
> Free/Open Source Software and careful engineering make Tahoe safer than
> common alternatives, such as RAID, removable drive, tape, "on-line
> storage" or "Cloud storage" systems.
> 
> This software comes with extensive unit tests [6], and there are no
> known security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data
> integrity.  (For all currently known issues please see the
> known_issues.txt file [3].)
> 
> This release of Tahoe is suitable for the "friendnet" use case [7] --
> it is easy to create a filesystem spread over the computers of you and
> your friends so that you can share disk space and files.
> 
> 
> 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"
> [8] 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 or, at your option, any later version.  (The
> Transitive Grace Period Public Licence has requirements similar to the
> GPL except that it allows you to wait for up to twelve months after you
> redistribute a derived work before releasing the source code of your
> derived work.) See the file "COPYING.TGPPL.html" [9] for the terms of
> the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, version 1.
> 
> (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, and
> probably most other systems.  Start with "docs/install.html" [10].
> 
> 
> HACKING AND COMMUNITY
> 
> Please join us on the mailing list [11].  Patches that extend and
> improve Tahoe are gratefully accepted -- the RoadMap page [12] shows
> the next improvements that we plan to make and CREDITS [13] lists the
> names of people who've contributed to the project.  The wiki Dev page
> [14] contains resources for hackers.
> 
> 
> SPONSORSHIP
> 
> Tahoe was originally developed thanks to the sponsorship of Allmydata,
> Inc. [15], a provider of commercial backup services.  Allmydata,
> Inc. created the Tahoe project, and contributed hardware, software,
> ideas, bug reports, suggestions, demands, and money (employing several
> Tahoe hackers and instructing them to spend part of their work time on
> this Free Software project).  Also they awarded customized t-shirts to
> hackers who find security flaws in Tahoe (see http://hacktahoe.org ).
> Thank you to Allmydata, Inc. for their generous and public-spirited
> support.
> 
> 
> Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
> on behalf of the allmydata.org team
> 
> Special acknowledgment goes to Brian Warner, whose superb engineering
> skills and dedication are primarily responsible for the Tahoe
> implementation, and largely responsible for the Tahoe design as well,
> not to mention most of the docs and many other things besides.
> 
> April 7, 2009
> Boulder, Colorado, USA
> 
> [1] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-March/001461.html
> [2] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=XXX
> [3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/NEWS ? rev = XXX
> [4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.txt
> [5] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/RelatedProjects
> [6] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
> [7] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases
> [8] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.GPL
> [9] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/COPYING.TGPPL.html
> [10] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html
> [11] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
> [12] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap
> [13] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=XXX 2677
> [14] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
> [15] http://allmydata.com
> 
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