ANNOUNCING Allmydata.org "Tahoe", the
Least-Authority Filesystem, v1.0
We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 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
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 v1.0 for the forseeable
future.
This release of Tahoe will form the basis of the new
consumer backup
product from Allmydata, Inc. -- http://allmydata.com .
This is the successor to Allmydata.org "Tahoe"
Least Authority
Filesystem v0.9, which was released March 13, 2008 [1].
Since v0.9
we've made the following changes:
* Use an added secret for convergent encryption to better
protect the
confidentiality of immutable files, and remove the
publically
readable hash of the plaintext (ticket #365).
* Add a "mkdir-p" feature to the WAPI (ticket
#357).
* Many updates to the Windows installer and Windows
filesystem
integration.
Tahoe v1.0 produces files which can't be read by older
versions of
Tahoe, although files produced by Tahoe >= 0.8 can be
read by Tahoe
1.0. The reason that older versions of Tahoe can't read
files
produced by Tahoe 1.0 is that those older versions require
the file to
come with a publically-readable hash of the plaintext, but
exposing
such a hash is a confidentiality leak, so Tahoe 1.0 does not
do it.
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
strongly encrypted, capability-based access control scheme.
Because this software is the product of less than a year and
a half 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 makes the use of this software a
much safer
alternative than common alternatives, such as RAID, or
traditional
backup onto a remote server, removable drive, or tape.
This software comes with extensive unit tests [2], and there
are no
known security flaws which would compromise confidentiality
or data
integrity. (For all currently known security issues please
see the
Security web page: [3].)
This release of Tahoe is suitable for the
"friendnet" use case [4] --
it is easy to create a filesystem spread over the computers
of you and
your friends so that you can share files and disk space with
one
another.
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"
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" 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" [5].
HACKING AND COMMUNITY
Please join us on the mailing list [6] to discuss uses of
Tahoe.
Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are gratefully
accepted -- the
RoadMap page [7] shows the next improvements that we plan to
make and
CREDITS [8] lists the names of people who've contributed to
the
project. The wiki Dev page [9] contains resources for
hackers.
SPONSORSHIP
Tahoe is sponsored by Allmydata, Inc. [10], a provider of
consumer
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). We are
eternally
grateful!
Zooko O'Whielacronx
on behalf of the allmydata.org team
March 25, 2008
San Francisco, California, USA
[1] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/relnotes.tx
t?rev=2315
[2] http://allmy
data.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
[3] http://
allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Security
[4] http://
allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/UseCases
[5] http://allmydata.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/install.ht
ml
[6] http://allmydata.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev
[7] http://allmyd
ata.org/trac/tahoe/roadmap
[8] http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/browser/CREDITS?rev=2345
[9] http://allmy
data.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/Dev
[10] http://allmydata.com
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