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138 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
138 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
ANNOUNCING Allmydata.org "Tahoe", the Least-Authority Filesystem, v1.0
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We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 of the "Tahoe"
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Least Authority Filesystem.
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The "Tahoe" Least Authority Filesystem is a secure, decentralized,
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fault-tolerant filesystem. All of the source code is available under
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a Free Software, Open Source licence (or two).
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This filesystem is encrypted and distributed over multiple peers in
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such a way it continues to function even when some of the peers are
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unavailable, malfunctioning, or malicious.
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A one-page explanation of the security and fault-tolerance properties
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that it offers is visible at:
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http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/about.html
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We believe that this version of Tahoe is stable enough to rely on as a
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permanent store of valuable data. The version 1 branch of Tahoe will
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be actively supported and maintained for the forseeable future, and
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future versions of Tahoe will retain the ability to read files and
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directories produced by Tahoe v1.0 for the forseeable future.
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This release of Tahoe will form the basis of the new consumer backup
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product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com .
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This is the successor to Allmydata.org "Tahoe" Least Authority
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Filesystem v0.9, which was released March 13, 2008 [1]. Since v0.9
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we've made the following changes:
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* Use an added secret for convergent encryption to better protect the
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confidentiality of immutable files, and remove the publically
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readable hash of the plaintext (ticket #365).
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* Add a "mkdir-p" feature to the WAPI (ticket #357).
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* Many updates to the Windows installer and Windows filesystem
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integration.
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Tahoe v1.0 produces files which can't be read by older versions of
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Tahoe, although files produced by Tahoe >= 0.8 can be read by Tahoe
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1.0. The reason that older versions of Tahoe can't read files
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produced by Tahoe 1.0 is that those older versions require the file to
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come with a publically-readable hash of the plaintext, but exposing
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such a hash is a confidentiality leak, so Tahoe 1.0 does not do it.
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WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
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With Tahoe, you can distribute your filesystem across a set of
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computers, such that if some of the computers fail or turn out to be
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malicious, the filesystem continues to work from the remaining
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computers. You can also share your files with other users, using a
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strongly encrypted, capability-based access control scheme.
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Because this software is the product of less than a year and a half of
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active development, we do not categorically recommend it for the
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storage of data which is extremely confidential or precious. However,
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we believe that the combination of erasure coding, strong encryption,
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and careful engineering makes the use of this software a much safer
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alternative than common alternatives, such as RAID, or traditional
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backup onto a remote server, removable drive, or tape.
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This software comes with extensive unit tests [2], and there are no
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known security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data
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integrity. (For all currently known security issues please see the
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Security web page: [3].)
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This release of Tahoe is suitable for the "friendnet" use case [4] --
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it is easy to create a filesystem spread over the computers of you and
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your friends so that you can share files and disk space with one
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another.
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LICENCE
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You may use this package under the GNU General Public License, version
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2 or, at your option, any later version. See the file "COPYING.GPL"
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for the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.
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You may use this package under the Transitive Grace Period Public
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Licence, version 1.0. The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence says
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that you may distribute proprietary derived works of Tahoe without
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releasing the source code of that derived work for up to twelve
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months, after which time you are obligated to release the source code
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of the derived work under the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence.
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See the file "COPYING.TGPPL.html" for the terms of the Transitive
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Grace Period Public Licence, version 1.0.
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(You may choose to use this package under the terms of either licence,
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at your option.)
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INSTALLATION
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Tahoe works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Cygwin, and Solaris. For
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installation instructions please see "docs/install.html" [5].
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HACKING AND COMMUNITY
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Please join us on the mailing list [6] to discuss uses of Tahoe.
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Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are gratefully accepted -- the
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RoadMap page [7] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and
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CREDITS [8] lists the names of people who've contributed to the
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project. The wiki Dev page [9] contains resources for hackers.
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SPONSORSHIP
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Tahoe is sponsored by Allmydata, Inc. [10], a provider of consumer
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backup services. Allmydata, Inc. contributes hardware, software,
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ideas, bug reports, suggestions, demands, and money (employing several
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allmydata.org Tahoe hackers and instructing them to spend part of
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their work time on this free-software project). We are eternally
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grateful!
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Zooko O'Whielacronx
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on behalf of the allmydata.org team
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March 25, 2008
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San Francisco, California, USA
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[1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.txt?rev=2315
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[2] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
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[3] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Security
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[4] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases
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[5] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.html
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[6] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
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[7] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap
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[8] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=2345
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[9] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
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[10] http://allmydata.com
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