ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.6 The Tahoe-LAFS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 1.6 of Tahoe-LAFS, an extremely reliable distributed key-value store and cloud filesystem. Tahoe-LAFS is the first cloud storage system which offers "provider-independent security" -- meaning that not even your cloud service provider can read or alter your data without your consent. Here is the one-page explanation of its unique security and fault-tolerance properties: http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html Tahoe-LAFS v1.6.0 is the successor to v1.5.0, which was released August 1, 2009 [1]. This release offers major performance improvements, usability improvements, and one major new feature: deep-immutable directories (cryptographically unalterable permanent snapshots), See the NEWS file [2] for details. WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? With Tahoe-LAFS, you spread 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 and securely share chosen files and directories with others. In addition to the core storage system itself, volunteers have developed related projects to integrate it with other tools. These include frontends for Windows, Macintosh, JavaScript, and iPhone, and plugins for Hadoop, bzr, duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and more. As of this release, contributors have added an Android frontend and a working read-only FUSE frontend. See the Related Projects page on the wiki [3]. We believe that the combination of erasure coding, strong encryption, Free/Open Source Software and careful engineering make Tahoe-LAFS safer than RAID, removable drive, tape, on-line backup or other Cloud storage systems. This software is developed under thorough unit tests, and there are no known bugs or security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data integrity under normal 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 seventh release in the version 1 series. The version 1 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 Tahoe-LAFS v1. In addition, version 1.6 improves forward-compatibility with planned future cap formats, allowing updates to a directory containing both current and future caps, without loss of information. 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 wait 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/install.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 thanks to the sponsorship of Allmydata, Inc. [12], a provider of commercial backup services. Allmydata founded the Tahoe-LAFS project and contributed hardware, software, ideas, bug reports, suggestions, demands, and they employedg several Tahoe-LAFS hackers and instructed them to spend part of their work time on this Free Software project. Also they awarded customized t-shirts to hackers who found security flaws in Tahoe-LAFS (see the Hack Tahoe-LAFS Hall Of Fame [13]). After discontinuing funding of Tahoe-LAFS R&D in early 2009, Allmydata, Inc. has continued to provide servers, co-lo space, bandwidth, and small personal gifts as tokens of appreciation. (Also they continue to provide bug reports.) Thank you to Allmydata, Inc. for their generous and public-spirited support. This is the third release of Tahoe-LAFS to be created solely as a labor of love by volunteers. Thank you very much to the dedicated team of "hackers in the public interest" who make Tahoe-LAFS possible. Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS team February 1, 2010 Boulder, Colorado, USA [1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=4042 [2] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/NEWS?rev=4189 [3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/RelatedProjects [4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.txt [5] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/COPYING.GPL [6] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/COPYING.TGPPL.html [7] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html [8] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev [9] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap [10] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=4186 [11] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev [12] http://allmydata.com [13] http://hacktahoe.org