Folks: I'm pretty excited about this relese of tahoe-lafs. Please try it out. Regards, Zooko ANNOUNCING allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem, v1.3 We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.0 of "Tahoe", the Least Authority Filesystem. Tahoe-LAFS is a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem. All of the source code is available under a choice of two Free Software, Open Source licences. This filesystem is encrypted and distributed over multiple peers in such a way it continues to function even when some of the peers are unavailable, malfunctioning, or malicious. Here is the one-page explanation of the security and fault-tolerance properties that it offers: http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html This is the successor to v1.2, which was released July 21, 2008 [1]. This is a major new release, adding a repairer, an efficient backup command, support for large files, an (S)FTP server, and much more. See the NEWS file [2] and the known_issues.txt file [3] for more information. In addition to the many new features of Tahoe itself, 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 Related Projects on the wiki: [4]. COMPATIBILITY The version 1 branch of Tahoe is the basis of the consumer backup product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com . Tahoe v1.3 is fully compatible with the version 1 branch of Tahoe. Files written by v1.3 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 older clients. v1.3 clients can read files produced by clients of all versions since v1.0. v1.3 servers can serve clients of all versions back to v1.0 and v1.3 clients can use servers of all versions back to v1.0 (but can't upload large files to them). This is the fourth release in the version 1 series. We believe that this version of Tahoe is stable enough to rely on as a permanent store of valuable data. The version 1 branch 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. 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, or "on-line storage" or "Cloud storage" systems. This software comes with extensive unit tests [5], 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 [2].) This release of Tahoe is suitable for the "friendnet" use case [6] -- 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" [7] 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 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" [8] 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, and probably most other systems. Start with "docs/install.html" [9]. HACKING AND COMMUNITY Please join us on the mailing list [10]. Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are gratefully accepted -- the RoadMap page [11] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and CREDITS [12] lists the names of people who've contributed to the project. The wiki Dev page [13] contains resources for hackers. SPONSORSHIP Tahoe is sponsored by Allmydata, Inc. [14], a provider of commercial backup services. Allmydata, Inc. created the Tahoe project, and contributes 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 award 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. February 13, 2009 Boulder, Colorado, USA [1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=2789 [2] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/NEWS [3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.txt [4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/RelatedProjects [5] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev [6] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases [7] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.GPL [8] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/COPYING.TGPPL.html [9] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html [10] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev [11] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap [12] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=2677 [13] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev [14] http://allmydata.com _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE