[clue-tech] Fwd: [lug] ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.7.1

Mon Jul 19 10:51:14 MDT 2010

Looks like it might be interesting to some o' yous.

David L. Willson
Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast
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tel://720.333.LANS
Freeing people from the tyranny (or whatevery) of Microsofty-ness

----- "Zooko O'Whielacronx" <zooko at zooko.com> wrote:

> From: "Zooko O'Whielacronx" <zooko at zooko.com>
> To: "Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List" <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>
> Sent: Monday, July 19, 2010 10:31:56 AM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
> Subject: [lug] ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.7.1
>
> ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.7.1
> 
> The Tahoe-LAFS team is pleased to announce the immediate
> availability of version 1.7.1 of Tahoe-LAFS, an extremely
> reliable distributed storage system.
> 
> Tahoe-LAFS is the first distributed storage system which
> offers "provider-independent security"—meaning that not even
> the operators of your storage servers can read or alter your
> data without your consent. Here is the one-page explanation of
> its unique security and fault-tolerance properties:
> 
> http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html
> 
> Tahoe-LAFS v1.7.1 is the successor to v1.7.0, which was
> released June 18, 2010 [1].
> 
> v1.7.1 is a stable minor release which adds several bugfixes
> and improvements in security, forward-compatibility,
> packaging, usability, and portability. See the NEWS file [2]
> for details.
> 
> 
> WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
> 
> With Tahoe-LAFS, you distribute your filesystem across
> multiple servers, and even if some of the servers are
> compromised by by an attacker, the entire filesystem continues
> to work correctly, and continues to preserve your privacy and
> security. You can easily share specific files and directories
> with other people.
> 
> In addition to the core storage system itself, volunteers have
> built other projects on top of Tahoe-LAFS and have integrated
> Tahoe-LAFS with existing systems.
> 
> These include frontends for Windows, Macintosh, JavaScript,
> iPhone, and Android, and plugins for Hadoop, bzr, mercurial,
> duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and more. See the Related Projects page
> on the wiki [3].
> 
> We believe that strong cryptography, Free and Open Source
> Software, erasure coding, and principled engineering practices
> make Tahoe-LAFS safer than RAID, removable drive, tape,
> on-line backup or "cloud storage" systems.
> 
> This software is developed under test-driven development, and
> there are no known bugs or security flaws which would
> compromise confidentiality or data integrity under recommended
> use. (For all currently known issues please see the
> known_issues.txt file [4].)
> 
> 
> COMPATIBILITY
> 
> This release is fully compatible with the version 1 series of
> Tahoe-LAFS. Clients from this release can write files and
> directories in the format used by clients of all versions back
> to v1.0 (which was released March 25, 2008). Clients from this
> release can read files and directories produced by clients of
> all versions since v1.0. Servers from this release can serve
> clients of all versions back to v1.0 and clients from this
> release can use servers of all versions back to v1.0.
> 
> This is the tenth release in the version 1 series. This series
> of Tahoe-LAFS will be actively supported and maintained for
> the forseeable future, and future versions of Tahoe-LAFS will
> retain the ability to read and write files compatible with
> this series.
> 
> 
> 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" [5] 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
> delay 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" [6] 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-LAFS works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Cygwin, Solaris,
> *BSD, and probably most other systems. Start with
> "docs/quickstart.html" [7].
> 
> 
> HACKING AND COMMUNITY
> 
> Please join us on the mailing list [8]. Patches are gratefully
> accepted -- the RoadMap page [9] shows the next improvements
> that we plan to make and CREDITS [10] lists the names of people
> who've contributed to the project. The Dev page [11] contains
> resources for hackers.
> 
> 
> SPONSORSHIP
> 
> Tahoe-LAFS was originally developed by Allmydata, Inc., a
> provider of commercial backup services. After discontinuing
> funding of Tahoe-LAFS R&D in early 2009, they have continued
> to provide servers, bandwidth, small personal gifts as tokens
> of appreciation, and bug reports. Thank you to Allmydata,
> Inc. for their generous and public-spirited support.
> 
> Google, Inc. is sponsoring Tahoe-LAFS development as part of
> the Google Summer of Code 2010. Google suggested that we
> should apply for the Summer of Code program, and when we did
> they generously awarded four sponsorships to students from
> around the world to hack on Tahoe-LAFS this summer. Thank you
> to Google, Inc. for their generous and public-spirited
> support.
> 
> 
> HACK TAHOE-LAFS!
> 
> If you can find a security flaw in Tahoe-LAFS which is serious
> enough that feel compelled to warn our users and issue a fix,
> then we will award you with a customized t-shirts with your
> exploit printed on it and add you to the "Hack Tahoe-LAFS Hall
> Of Fame" [12].
> 
> 
> ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
> 
> This is the fifth release of Tahoe-LAFS to be created solely
> as a labor of love by volunteers. Thank you very much to the
> team of "hackers in the public interest" who make Tahoe-LAFS
> possible.
> 
> David-Sarah Hopwood and Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
> on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS team
> 
> July 18, 2010
> Rainhill, Merseyside, UK and Boulder, Colorado, USA
> 
> 
> [1] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=4514
> [2] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/NEWS?rev=4577
> [3] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/RelatedProjects
> [4] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.txt
> [5] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.GPL
> [6] http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/COPYING.TGPPL.html
> [7] http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/quickstart.html
> [8] http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
> [9] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap
> [10] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=4567
> [11] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
> [12] http://tahoe-lafs.org/hacktahoelafs/
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