-Allmydata, Inc. [1], provider of the "Allmydata" consumer backup product, is
-pleased to announce the first public release of "Tahoe", a secure,
-distributed storage grid with a free-software licence.
+ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.8.3
-The source code that we are releasing is the current working prototype for
-Allmydata's next-generation product. This release is targeted at hackers who
-are willing to use a minimal, text-oriented web user interface.
+The Tahoe-LAFS team is pleased to announce the immediate
+availability of version 1.8.3 of Tahoe-LAFS, an extremely
+reliable distributed storage system. Get it here:
-This prototype is not recommended for storage of confidential data nor for
-data which is not otherwise backed up, but it already implements a functional
-distributed storage grid and is useful for experimentation, prototyping, and
-extension.
+http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst
+
+Tahoe-LAFS is the first distributed storage system to offer
+"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.rst
+
+The previous stable release of Tahoe-LAFS was v1.8.2, which was
+released January 30, 2011 [1].
+
+v1.8.3 is a stable bugfix release which fixes a security issue. See the file
+[2] and known_issues.rst [3] file for details.
+
+
+WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
+
+With Tahoe-LAFS, you distribute your filesystem across
+multiple servers, and even if some of the servers fail or are
+taken over 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, including
+Windows, JavaScript, iPhone, Android, Hadoop, Flume, Django,
+Puppet, bzr, mercurial, perforce, duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and
+more. See the Related Projects page on the wiki [4].
+
+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.
+
+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 important issues that we are currently aware of
+please see the known_issues.rst file [3].)
+
+
+COMPATIBILITY
+
+This release is 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 fourteenth release in the version 1 series. This
+series of Tahoe-LAFS will be actively supported and maintained
+for the foreseeable future, and future versions of Tahoe-LAFS
+will retain the ability to read and write files compatible
+with this series.
LICENCE
-Tahoe is offered under the GNU General Public License (v2 or later), with the
-added permission that, if you become obligated to release a derived work
-under this licence (as per section 2.b), you may delay the fulfillment of
-this obligation for up to 12 months.
+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.rst" [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
-This release of Tahoe works and passes all unit tests on Linux/x86,
-Linux/amd64, Mac/Intel, Mac/PPC, Windows-native, and Cygwin.
+Tahoe-LAFS works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, *BSD,
+and probably most other systems. Start with
+"docs/quickstart.rst" [7].
-To install, download the tarball [2], untar it, go into the resulting
-directory, and follow the directions in the README [3].
+HACKING AND COMMUNITY
-USAGE
+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.
-Once installed, create a "client node". Instruct this client node to connect
-to a specific "introducer node" by means of config files in the client node's
-working directory. To join a public grid, copy in the .furl files for that
-grid. To create a private grid, run your own introducer, and copy its .furl
-files. See the README for step-by-step instructions.
-Each client node runs a local webserver (enabled by writing the desired port
-number into a file called 'webport'). The front page of this webserver shows
-the node's status, including which introducer is being used and which other
-nodes are connected. Links from the status page lead to others that give
-access to a shared virtual filesystem, in which each directory is represented
-by a separate page. Each directory page shows a list of the files available
-there, with download links, and forms to upload new files.
+SPONSORSHIP
-Other ways to access the filesystem are planned, as well as other structures
-than the single globally-shared namespace implemented by this release: please
-see the roadmap.txt [5] for some rough details.
+Atlas Networks has contributed several hosted servers for performance
+testing. Thank you to Atlas Networks for their generous and public-spirited
+support.
-HACKING AND COMMUNITY
+HACK TAHOE-LAFS!
+
+If you can find a security flaw in Tahoe-LAFS which is serious
+enough that we 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 eighth 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.
+
+Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
+on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS team
+
+September 13, 2011
+Boulder, Colorado, USA
+
-Please join the mailing list [4] to discuss the ideas behind Tahoe and
-extensions of and uses of Tahoe. Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are
-gratefully accepted -- roadmap.txt shows the next improvements that we plan
-to make. You can browse the revision control history, source code, and issue
-tracking at the Trac instance [6]. Please see the buildbot [7], which shows
-how Tahoe builds and passes unit tests on each checkin, and the code coverage
-results [8] and percentage-covered graph [9], which show how much of the
-Tahoe source code is currently exercised by the test suite.
-
-
-NETWORK ARCHITECTURE
-
-Each peer maintains a connection to each other peer. A single distinct
-server called an "introducer" is used to discover other peers with which to
-connect.
-
-To store a file, the file is encrypted and erasure coded, and each resulting
-share is uploaded to a different peer. The secure hash of the encrypted file
-and the encryption key are packed into a URI, knowledge of which is necessary
-and sufficient to recover the file.
-
-To fetch a file, starting with the URI, a subset of shares is downloaded from
-peers, the file is reconstructed from the shares, and then decrypted.
-
-A single distinct server called a "vdrive server" maintains a global mapping
-from pathnames/filenames to URIs.
-
-We are well aware of the limitations of decentralization and scalability
-inherent in this prototype. In particular, the completely-connected property
-of the grid and the requirement of a single distinct introducer and vdrive
-server limits the possible size of the grid. We have plans to loosen these
-limitations (see roadmap.txt). Currently it should be noted that the grid
-already depends as little as possible on the accessibility and correctness of
-the introduction server and the vdrive server. Also note that the choice of
-which servers to use is easily configured -- you should be able to set up a
-private grid for you and your friends almost as easily as to connect to our
-public test grid.
-
-
-SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
-
-Tahoe is a "from the ground-up" rewrite, inspired by Allmydata's existing
-consumer backup service. It is primarily written in Python.
-
-Tahoe is based on the Foolscap library [10] which provides a remote object
-protocol inspired by the capability-secure "E" programming language [11].
-Foolscap allows us to express the intended behavior of the distributed grid
-directly in object-oriented terms while relying on a well-engineered, secure
-transport layer.
-
-The underlying networking is provided by the Twisted library [12].
-Computationally intensive operations are performed in native compiled code,
-such as the "zfec" library for fast erasure coding (also available
-separately: [13]).
-
-
-[1] http://allmydata.com
-[2] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/tahoe-0.2.0-0-UNSTABLE.tar.gz
-[3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/README
-[4] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
-[5] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/roadmap.txt
-[6] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe
-[7] http://allmydata.org/buildbot
-[8] http://allmydata.org/tahoe-figleaf/figleaf/
-[9] http://allmydata.org/tahoe-figleaf-graph/hanford.allmydata.com-tahoe_figleaf.html
-[10] http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/FoolsCap
-[11] http://erights.org/
-[12] http://twistedmatrix.com/
-[13] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/src/zfec
+[1] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=5164
+[2] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/1.8.3/NEWS.rst?rev=5014
+[3] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.rst
+[4] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/RelatedProjects
+[5] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.GPL
+[6] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.TGPPL.rst
+[7] http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst
+[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-lafs/browser/1.8.3/CREDITS?rev=5003
+[11] http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
+[12] http://tahoe-lafs.org/hacktahoelafs/
projects / tahoe-lafs / tahoe-lafs.git / blobdiff