ANNOUNCING: Allmydata.org "Tahoe" version 0.9 We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.9 of allmydata.org "Tahoe". Allmydata.org "Tahoe" 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 that it continues to work correctlly even when some of the peers are unavailable, malfunctioning, or malicious. A one-page explanation of the novel properties of this filesystem is visible at: http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html This is the successor to Allmydata.org "Tahoe" v0.8, which was released February 15, 2008 [1]. This release is backwards-compatible with v0.8. This is a major release of allmydata.org "Tahoe" -- the first release which is considered stable and functional enough to serve as a permanent store of valuable data. New versions of Tahoe are expected to maintain backwards compatibility with this version for the forseeable future. This release of allmydata.org "Tahoe" will form the basis of the next consumer backup product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com . This release adds extensive "visibility into the grid" -- the web user interface now shows detailed information about the nodes comprising the grid and fine-grained statistics about the time and space used for the storage and retrieval operations. Since v0.8 we've made the following changes: * Added user-friendly Windows application and package, thanks especially to Rob Kinninmont and Mike Booker (tickets #195, 242, 243, 321, 335). * Display information about uploads and downloads (ticket #39). * Improve performance (including tickets #304, 321). * Improve packaging and testing (including ticket #145). * Add even more extensive automated tests (including ticket #207). * Updated documentation. 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 strongly encrypted, capability-based access control scheme. This release is targeted at hackers and smart users who are willing to use a web user interface, a command-line user interface, or a FUSE interface. (Or a RESTful API. Just telnet to localhost and type HTTP requests to get started.) Because this software is the product of less than a year and a half 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 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 hard drive, removable drive, or tape. This software comes with extensive unit tests [2], and there are no known security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data integrity. (For all currently known security issues please see the Security web page: [3].) This release of Tahoe is suitable for the "friendnet" use case [4] -- 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" 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" 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" [5]. HACKING AND COMMUNITY Please join us on the mailing list [6] to discuss uses of Tahoe. Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are gratefully accepted -- the RoadMap page [7] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and CREDITS [8] lists the names of people who've contributed to the project. The wiki Dev page [9] contains resources for hackers. SPONSORSHIP Tahoe is sponsored by Allmydata, Inc. [10], 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 allowing them to spend part of their work time on the next-generation, free-software project). We are eternally grateful! Zooko O'Whielacronx on behalf of the allmydata.org team March 13, 2008 Boulder, Colorado, USA [1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=2183 [2] http://allmydata.org/tahoe-figleaf/current/ [3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Security [4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases [5] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html [6] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev [7] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap [8] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=2307 [9] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev [10] http://allmydata.com P.S. Someday, people might search for some of the earliest occurrences of the name "LAUGFS", which stands for "Least AUthority Grid FileSystem". Hello, searchers from the future!