OurFileSystem

OurFileSystem (OFS) is a peer-to-peer file and metadata sharing program. Peers freely join the network, but must be granted access to groups in which metadata and files are shared. Any peer may create a group and grant others access to the group. Group members have different degrees of authority to grant others access and set their authority. Metadata for files is created by users within the context of a group and distributed to all members of the group in the form of a post. Post templates can be created to set fields of metadata. Templates are distributed to all members of a group, and one can be selected when creating a post or searching for files. Metadata in posts is indexed, and sophisticated search on the metadata can be performed locally to help users find files of interest quickly. Files found during a search may be downloaded from peers upon request. Pieces of files are downloaded from as many different peers as possible to maximize bandwidth. Peers within a group may also be marked as bad locally. If a user marks another peer as bad within the context of a group, posts from that peer to the group are deleted and not shared with others. Furthermore, any peer that was granted access by a peer marked as bad is also marked bad. No further posts or authorizations are ever accepted from any peer marked as bad. OFS also supports small public and private messages, which are distributed to all peers in the network. Private messages are encrypted so only the intended peer can decrypt the message. Lastly OFS integrates well with anonymous overlay networks that support SOCKS proxies, such as TOR. I2P support has also been explicitly added.