ANNOUNCING Allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem, v1.2

We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.2.0 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 v1.1, which was released June 11, 2008 [1].  This release
fixes a security issue in Tahoe v1.1, fixes a few small issues in the
web interface, adds a "check health" operation for mutable files, and
adds logging/operations/deployment improvements.

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 v1.2 is fully compatible with Tahoe v1.0.  v1.2 clients produce
files which can be read by v1.0 clients.  v1.2 clients can read files
produced by clients of all versions >= v0.8.  v1.2 servers can serve
v1.0 clients and v1.2 clients can use v1.0 servers.

This is the third 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 make Tahoe safer 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 disk space and share files.


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 commercial
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).  Also they distribute
customized t-shirts just for some of our favorite contributors.  We
are eternally grateful!


Zooko O'Whielacronx
on behalf of the allmydata.org team
July 21, 2008
Boulder, Colorado, USA

[1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=2716
[2] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/docs/known_issues.txt
[3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/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
