-Allmydata, Inc. [1], provider of the "Allmydata" consumer backup product, is
-pleased announce the first public release of "Tahoe", a secure, distributed
-storage mesh with a free-software licence.
+ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File Store, v1.10.2
-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 build from source and use a minimal, text-oriented web user
-interface.
+The Tahoe-LAFS team is pleased to announce version 1.10.2 of
+Tahoe-LAFS, an extremely reliable decentralized 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 is already implements a
-functional distributed storage mesh and is useful for experimentation,
-prototyping, and extension.
+https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/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:
-INSTALLATION
+https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/about.rst
-This release of Tahoe works and passes all unit tests on Linux/x86,
-Linux/amd64, Mac/Intel, Mac/PPC, Windows-native, and Cygwin.
+The previous stable release of Tahoe-LAFS was v1.10.1, released
+on June 15, 2015.
-To install, download the tarball [2], untar it, cd into the resulting
-directory, and follow the directions in the README [3].
+v1.10.2 is a small bugfix release, which fixes a critical
+packaging error that prevented v1.10.1 from building against the
+latest version of the upstream "mock" library. A few small bugs
+were fixed too. See the NEWS file [1] for details.
-USAGE
+WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
-Once installed, create a "client node" as described in the README. 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 mesh,
-copy in the .furl files for that mesh. To create a private mesh, run your
-own introducer, and copy its .furl files.
+With Tahoe-LAFS, you distribute your data across multiple
+servers. Even if some of the servers fail or are taken over
+by an attacker, the entire file store continues to function
+correctly, preserving your privacy and security. You can
+easily share specific files and directories with other people.
-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.
+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 [3].
-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 for some rough details.
+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 [2].)
-HACKING AND COMMUNITY
-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 [5] 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 note the buildbot results
-page [7], which show 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 the test suite.
+COMPATIBILITY
+
+This release should be 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.
+
+Except for the new optional MDMF format, we have not made any
+intentional compatibility changes. However we do not yet have
+the test infrastructure to continuously verify that all new
+versions are interoperable with previous versions. We intend
+to build such an infrastructure in the future.
+
+The new Introducer protocol added in v1.10 is backwards
+compatible with older clients and introducer servers, however
+some features will be unavailable when an older node is
+involved. Please see docs/nodekeys.rst [14] for details.
+
+This is the nineteenth 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.
-
-
-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 share
-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 mesh and the requirement of a single distinct introducer and vdrive
-server limits the possible size of the mesh. We have plans to loosen these
-limitations (see roadmap.txt [5]). Currently it should be noted that the
-mesh 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 mesh for you and your friends almost as easily as to
-connect to our public test mesh.
-
-
-SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
-
-Tahoe is a "from the ground-up" rewrite, inspired by Allmydata's existing
-consumer backup service. It is primarily written in Python.
-
-It uses 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 mesh 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-0.1.2-0-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
+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" [4] 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" [5] 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, Solaris, *BSD,
+and probably most other systems. Start with
+"docs/quickstart.rst" [6].
+
+
+HACKING AND COMMUNITY
+
+Please join us on the mailing list [7]. Patches are gratefully
+accepted -- the RoadMap page [8] shows the next improvements
+that we plan to make and CREDITS [9] lists the names of people
+who've contributed to the project. The Dev page [10] contains
+resources for hackers.
+
+
+SPONSORSHIP
+
+Atlas Networks has contributed several hosted servers for
+performance testing. Thank you to Atlas Networks [11] for
+their generous and public-spirited support.
+
+And a special thanks to Least Authority Enterprises [12],
+which employs several Tahoe-LAFS developers, for their
+continued support.
+
+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-shirt with your
+exploit printed on it and add you to the "Hack Tahoe-LAFS Hall
+Of Fame" [13].
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
+
+This is the fourteenth 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.
+
+Brian Warner
+on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS team
+
+July 30, 2015
+San Francisco, California, USA
+
+
+[1] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/NEWS.rst
+[2] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/docs/known_issues.rst
+[3] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/RelatedProjects
+[4] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/COPYING.GPL
+[5] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/COPYING.TGPPL.rst
+[6] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/docs/quickstart.rst
+[7] https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
+[8] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/roadmap
+[9] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/CREDITS
+[10] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/Dev
+[11] http://atlasnetworks.us/
+[12] https://leastauthority.com/
+[13] https://tahoe-lafs.org/hacktahoelafs/
+[14] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/docs/nodekeys.rst
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