[tahoe-dev] Tahoe-LAFS featured on Boing Boing; encouragement, praise, and calls to action ensue

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

Folks:

Tahoe-LAFS was featured on Boing Boing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/05/tahoe-lafs-a-p2p-fil.html

This set off a flurry of tweets about Tahoe-LAFS, and an article in an
Italian web magazine:

http://www.ossblog.it/post/5744/tahoe-lafs

Which itself set off more tweets (these ones in Italian).

There was also a thoughtful blog entry in German by a crypto guy, but
I've lost the link to it.

In the letter that I sent to Boing Boing I wrote: "Please try it out
and contribute bug reports! We are an all-volunteer project of Free
Software hackers in the public interest. We need encouragement, love,
and bug reports.".

The readers of Boing Boing responded by uploading test files and
creating test directories in the public test directory with nice
encouraging names like "Hey this really works" and "Success!" and "Way
to go!". Of course, subsequently someone clicked the "del" button next
to most of them. Kind words are ephemeral -- I'm glad I glanced at the
public test directory while they were there.

Here's the public test directory:

http://testgrid.allmydata.org:3567/uri/URI%3ADIR2%3Adjrdkfawoqihigoett4g6auz6a%3Ajx5mplfpwexnoqff7y5e4zjus4lidm76dcuarpct7cckorh2dpgq

Someone also uploaded this video of Eben Moglen speaking on the topic
of "Privacy in the Cloud":

http://testgrid.allmydata.org:3567/file/URI%3ACHK%3Aqehw4g6bpp4jilzjwwzwnkinmu%3Ayzsirhh6kq2bfsjkic5i6occ2g5pwobyhrunv6odo4uzzuo3ajqa%3A3%3A10%3A500447982/@@named=/1710-01_eben_moglen_freedom_in_the_cloud.ogg

The last third of the talk (starting around 38:00) is a call to action
to build a Freedom-Compatible software stack, running on embedded
devices owned and controlled by actual humans, and provides all of the
modern services -- microblogging, social networking, encrypted backup.
Exciting! I hope that the people who really build that system can rely
on Tahoe-LAFS as a component.

(N.B. I think he greatly underestimates the technical challenges and
completely omits the even bigger challenge of making it economically
self-sustaining.)

Regards,

Zooko