Increase Public Awareness of Tahoe-LAFS

[daira]

Moved from ​https://github.com/LeastAuthority/leastauthority.com/issues/294:

defuse wrote:

Tahoe-LAFS needs to be more popular. We have to better communicate what it is to a wider audience. This will solve two problems:

• Customers sign up for S4 without knowing what Tahoe-LAFS is, making it (I'm guessing) likely that they will cancel instead of putting in the effort to learn how to use it.
• The technology in Tahoe-LAFS isn't re-used and isn't cited as often as it should be.

(Note that this is something I pulled out of my usability notes, ​https://github.com/LeastAuthority/leastauthority.com/issues/196).

Does anyone have ideas on how to do that?

[daira]

defuse wrote:

I propose a name change. I don't know what to change it to, but Tahoe-LAFS is bad because (1) It isn't a file system, and (2) "Tahoe" is meaningless to me, even after I read ​an extremely boring etymology of the name.

[daira]

zancas wrote, I suspect not entirely seriously:

• Secure Distributed Data Store
• Secure Data Distribution System
• Secure Data Distribution and Recovery System
• allmydata
• allthedata
• unhackable exocortex UE
• Unhackable Metacortex
• Relatively Difficult to Hack Distributed Data Store
• Name-of-Some-Lake Least Authority Non-File-System

[leif]

I ​suggested keeping the name Tahoe-LAFS but redefining the acronym from "Least Authority File System" to "Least Authority File Store". Zooko replied "Good idea" :)

Since then, whenever I've told people about Tahoe-LAFS, I've mentioned that even though there are ways to use it via FUSE it isn't really a file system exactly but rather a file store.

If daira and warner are into changing the name, I'd be happy to do some of the search+replace leg work.

[jg71]

Replying to leif:

I ​suggested keeping the name Tahoe-LAFS but redefining the acronym from "Least Authority File System" to "Least Authority File Store". Zooko replied "Good idea" :)

+1

[daira]

Replying to leif:

I ​suggested keeping the name Tahoe-LAFS but redefining the acronym from "Least Authority File System" to "Least Authority File Store". Zooko replied "Good idea" :)

+10

[daira]

I changed the wiki front page to say "Least-Authority File Store". (Note the hyphen: "Least-Authority" is a compound adjective.)

[daira]

Review needed for ​https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs/pull/131.

[rvs]

Does review still needed here? ;)

[Brian Warner <warner@…>]

In 4723af6/trunk:

LAFS now stands for "Least-Authority File Store" rather than "Least-Authority File System". refs #2345

Signed-off-by: Daira Hopwood <daira@…>

[Brian Warner <warner@…>]

In 2055a66/trunk:

Doc changes that require more careful review. refs #2345

Signed-off-by: Daira Hopwood <daira@…>

[Brian Warner <warner@…>]

In d3acf82/trunk:

Rename FilesystemOptions? to FileStoreOptions?. refs #2345

Signed-off-by: Daira Hopwood <daira@…>

[Brian Warner <warner@…>]

In eb1b51e/trunk:

Clean up some remaining obsolete terminology. refs #2345

Signed-off-by: Daira Hopwood <daira@…>

[Brian Warner <warner@…>]

In 2cad199/trunk:

Merge PR380: LAFS = "Least-Authority File Store"

Closes tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs#380
refs ticket:2345

[warner]

PR landed. The goal of this ticket is somewhat larger than a name-change, though.. what can we do to close it? I like having actionable tickets :).