[tahoe-lafs-weekly-news] Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News, edition 4, 2011-06-26

Zooko O'Whielacronx zooko at zooko.com
Sun Jun 26 09:16:40 PDT 2011 

=======================================================
 Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News, issue number 4, June 26, 2011
=======================================================

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`_.

.. _Tahoe-LAFS: http://tahoe-lafs.org
.. _View TWN on the web:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/TahoeLAFSWeeklyNews
.. _subscribe to TWN:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-lafs-weekly-news

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

Tahoe-LAFS Included In Debian
-----------------------------

Tahoe-LAFS is now a `part of Debian`_.  The FreedomBox project was
requesting it so some Debian devs including Bertagaz and Micah Anderson have
gotten it properly packaged.  Now you can install Tahoe on debian with
"apt-get install tahoe-lafs".  We would like to thank both the `FreedomBox
Foundation`_ and Debian_ for their work in getting this done.

Tahoe-LAFS Summit Begins Monday
-------------------------------

The `First International Tahoe-LAFS Summit`_ starts this Monday, June 27th.
Thanks to the folks at Noisebridge_ for providing the Summit a home.  I am
really looking to seeing the results of the Summit in upcoming releases of
Tahoe-LAFS.  If you are in the San Francisco area, this is an event you
don't want to miss.  If you can't be there and you know how to set up a
livestream, please let us know.  Listening and watching the Summit from
somewhere else is almost as fun.

If you attend the Summit either physically or by livestream, look for these
faces: |zooko| |brian| |davidsarah| |kevan| |peter| |marlowe|
|françois| |frédéric| |marc|

.. _part of Debian:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-June/006496.html
.. _FreedomBox Foundation: http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/
.. _Debian: http://www.debian.org
.. _First International Tahoe-LAFS Summit:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/Summit
.. _Noisebridge: https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge
.. _these faces: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

Interview with a Developer
==========================

The Developer this week is Patrick "Marlowe" McDonald, who is also the
primary writer of the Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News. Normally Patrick is the
interviewer, so this time around Zooko will be the interviewer and Patrick
the interviewee.

|zooko| *Zooko: Please tell me a little about yourself—tell us who you are.*

|marlowe| Patrick: My name is Patrick McDonald.  I have worked as a security
consultant for the last 11 years.  I have participated to various degress in
Tahoe, OSVDB, DatalossDB and Cloutage. I married my beautiful wife a little
over a year ago and was blessed this past April with our second child.

*Zooko: That's sweet. Are those all open source projects?*

*Zooko: Except for your wife and child I mean.*

*Zooko: Children.*

Patrick: OSVDB, DatalossDB and Cloutage are all projects under the Open
Security Foundation.  OSVDB works as a vulnerability database clearinghouse.
DatalossDB gathers information on dataloss incidents and Cloutage which is
relatively new is attempting to document site specific issues (hacks,
outages, etc).

*Zooko: Oh, that's interesting.*

Patrick: Defintely recommend people check them out.  They are a great way to
learn about security and participate in the community without needing to be
a coder.

*Zooko: You are one of the newest contributors to the Tahoe-LAFS
project. How did you hear about it?*

Patrick: Prior to moving back to the Washington DC area, I lived in Eagle,
Colorado.  Looking for Linux User Groups in the area, I stumbled across
Tahoe. *(Tahoe-LAFS contributor Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn lives in Boulder,
Colorado and is active in the Boulder Linux Users Group. -Ed.)* I have a
huge interest in encryption and privacy.  Unfortunately I was laid off from
my job and moved back east before I could explore it further.

*Zooko: How did you get involved in the Tahoe-LAFS project?*

Patrick: I am not a programmer (although I am working to fix that), but I
wanted to contribute to the project.  I find it is the best way to learn
something. I am good writer, particularly in making concepts easy to
comprehend, so I offered to start working on the documentation. Work on the
documentation flowed into writing the TWN.  TWN has taught me a tremendous
amount about the project and other interesting concepts/projects. Peter's
comment about contributing while not being a good coder in `the last TWN`_
really inspired me and hopefully will inspire others like me.

.. _the last TWN: http://tahoe-lafs.org/~zooko/TWN3.0.1.html

*Zooko: You are the writer of the Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News from the
first issue until this, the fourth issue. Thank you very much! It was
been a really good tool for letting people in our community learn
about what is going on.*

*Zooko: Was there anything that surprised you or wasn't what you
expected when you learned more about the Tahoe-LAFS project?*

Patrick: The Tahoe community has been pleasantly suprising.  Just lurking in
#tahoe-lafs, you will catch discussions on diet, economics, cryptography,
bitcoin, anonymity, politics.  My followup reading list has grown
exponentially due to the project.

Patrick: Most projects have a very closed culture when it comes to
beginners/non-coders.  Tahoe has been just the opposite, the devs point you
in a direction where you can help and provide assistance so you can succeed.

*Zooko: What advice do you have for newcomers who want to get involved?*

Patrick: Don't let the fact that others know more intimidate you.  In all
the projects I joined (OSVDB, DatalossDB, Cloutage, and now Tahoe), I
initially felt like a role player on the NY Yankees.  The people I worked
with were people I greatly admired and were admired by the community.

Patrick: But then I realized, that I was on the NY Yankees and just by being
around them, I was becoming better at what I was doing.

Patrick: So just ask and dive right in.

*Zooko: Where do you want the Tahoe-LAFS project to go—where do you
see it in a year or two?*

Patrick: Well just this week Tahoe hit one of the milestones I was hoping
for, packaging in Debian. As a personal goal, I want my parents to be able
to understand and run Tahoe through the use of my documentation.

*Zooko: An admirable goal!*

Patrick: I want to see Tahoe making headway into commerical companies
(Rackspace, Google, etc).  The concept is truly fantastic, it needs
widespread adoption.

*Zooko: Okay, thank you very much for taking the time to give us an interview.*

Patrick: Thank you. This has been a great job. I really enjoy it.

Commercial Supporter of the Week
================================

TWN is pleased to announce Atlas Networks |AtlasNetworks| as its first
Commercial Supporter of the Week.  Congratulations to Atlas Networks.  Atlas
Networks is a Seattle based datacenter and managed services company, and a
leading provider of dedicated servers, VOIP, cloud computing, hosted
QuickBooks, hosted Exchange, website hosting and data backup. Atlas Networks
has contributed feedback and benchmarks to the Tahoe-LAFS project as well as
giving us permanent exclusive use of several of their good hosted
servers for testing and performance measurements. Thank you!

.. |AtlasNetworks| image:: http://secorp.net/images/AtlasNetworks.png

>From the tahoe-dev Mailing List
===============================

On the tahoe-dev mailing list this week, the discussion about access control
in decentralized open systems continued, with Toby Cabot contributing a nice
article which could serve as `an introduction to the subject`_.

Also there was a somewhat large discussion about how some company had sent a
takedown request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to the operator
of the public demo test grid. David Triendl, who operates the publicly
accessible web gateway to the test grid summarized_.

Also there was some discussion about the imminent Tahoe-LAFS Summit and
about the new Debian packaging.

.. _an introduction to the subject:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-June/006468.html
.. _summarized: http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2011-June/006487.html

Bug of the week
===============

This week we have three bugs of the week, 552_, 669_ and 1307_.  All
these bugs are related to webdrive_.  You may remember webdrive from our
announcement in `TWN 1`_ or our interview_ last week with Peter Secor.
Webdrive is a JavaScript UI for Tahoe-LAFS that was developed by
AllMyData.  Peter Secorp stated it would be most useful in running
unhosted web apps.

.. _552: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/552
.. _669: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/669
.. _1307: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1307
.. _webdrive: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-webdrive/browser
.. _`TWN 1`: http://tahoe-lafs.org/~zooko/TWN1.html
.. _interview: http://tahoe-lafs.org/~zooko/TWN3.html

Patch Needing Review of the Week
================================

The Patch Needing Review of the Week is 1010_. This is a patch contributed
by Duck, who hacks on the I2P_ anonymous networking system. The patch lets
you configure your Tahoe-LAFS node so that it won't announce its IP address,
which would compromise your anonymity when running Tahoe-LAFS over I2P.

.. _1010: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1010
.. _I2P: http://i2p2.de

Tips and Tricks of the Week
===========================

>From the wiki TipsTricks_ page.

Mac users: you can publish your iCal calendars onto Tahoe-LAFS. Then people
can subscribe to your iCal calendars either through their own local
Tahoe-LAFS gateway or through a publicly accessible gateway. Kevin Reid
posted instructions_.

.. _TipsTricks: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/TipsTricks
.. _instructions:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-July/002219.html

----

*The Tahoe-LAFS Weekly News is published once a week by The Tahoe-LAFS
Software Foundation, President and Treasurer: Peter Secor. Scribes:
Patrick "marlowe" McDonald, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, Editor: Zooko.*
`View TWN on the web`_ *or* `subscribe to TWN`_ *. Send your news
stories to* marlowe at antagonism.org_ *— submission deadline: Friday
night.*

.. _marlowe at antagonism.org: mailto:marlowe at antagonism.org

.. |zooko| image:: http://secorp.net/images/zooko.png
   :height: 35
   :alt: zooko
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |brian| image:: http://secorp.net/images/warner.png
   :height: 35
   :alt: brian
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |davidsarah| image:: http://secorp.net/images/davidsarah_bw.png
   :height: 35
   :alt: davidsarah
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |kevan| image:: http://secorp.net/images/kevan_c_bw_sm.png
   :height: 35
   :alt: kevan
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |peter| image:: http://secorp.net/images/psecor.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: peter
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |marlowe| image::
http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/raw-attachment/wiki/AboutUs/marlowe-x75-bw.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: marlowe
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |françois| image::
http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/raw-attachment/wiki/AboutUs/francois_greyscale.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: françois
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |frédéric| image::
http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/raw-attachment/wiki/AboutUs/freestorm.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: frédéric
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

.. |marc| image:: http://secorp.net/images/midnight_magic_sm.jpg
   :height: 35
   :alt: marc
   :target: http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/AboutUs

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