ANNOUNCING Allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem, v1.1 We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.1 of the "Tahoe" Least Authority Filesystem. The "Tahoe" Least Authority Filesystem is a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem. All of the source code is available under a Free Software, Open Source licence (or two). 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. A one-page explanation of the security and fault-tolerance properties that it offers is visible at: http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html This is the successor to Allmydata.org "Tahoe" Least Authority Filesystem v1.0, which was released March 25, 2008 [1]. This release fixes several serious issues in Tahoe v1.0, and improves the user interfaces. See the known_issues.txt file [2] and the NEWS file [3] for details. COMPATIBILITY The version 1 branch of Tahoe is used as the basis of the consumer backup product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com . Tahoe v1.1 is fully compatible with Tahoe v1.0. v1.1 clients produce files which can be read by v1.0 clients. v1.1 clients can read files produced by clients of all versions >= v0.8. v1.1 servers can serve v1.0 clients and v1.1 clients can use v1.0 servers. This is the second 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 filesystem continues to work from the remaining computers. You can also share your files with other users, using a cryptographic capability-based access control scheme. Because this software is the product of less than two years of active development, we do not categorically recommend it for the storage of data which is extremely confidential or precious. However, we believe that the combination of erasure coding, strong encryption, and careful engineering makes the use of this software a much safer alternative than common alternatives, such as RAID, or traditional backup onto a remote server, removable drive, or tape. This software comes with extensive unit tests [4], 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 [5] -- it is easy to create a filesystem spread over the computers of you and your friends so that you can share files and disk space with one another. 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" [6] 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 says that you may distribute proprietary derived works of Tahoe without releasing the source code of that derived work for up to twelve months, after which time you are obligated to release the source code of the derived work under the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence. See the file "COPYING.TGPPL.html" [7] 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. For installation instructions please see "docs/install.html" [8]. HACKING AND COMMUNITY Please join us on the mailing list [9] to discuss uses of Tahoe. Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are gratefully accepted -- the RoadMap page [10] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and CREDITS [11] lists the names of people who've contributed to the project. The wiki Dev page [12] contains resources for hackers. SPONSORSHIP Tahoe is sponsored by Allmydata, Inc. [13], a provider of consumer backup services. Allmydata, Inc. contributes hardware, software, ideas, bug reports, suggestions, demands, and money (employing several allmydata.org Tahoe hackers and instructing them to spend part of their work time on this free-software project). We are eternally grateful! Zooko O'Whielacronx on behalf of the allmydata.org team June 11, 2008 San Francisco, California, USA [1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=2348 [2] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.txt [3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/NEWS [4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev [5] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases [6] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.GPL [7] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/COPYING.TGPPL.html [8] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html [9] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev [10] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap [11] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=2677 [12] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev [13] http://allmydata.com