The Ficus project has developed an optimistically replicated Unix-compatible file system. This project has been ongoing at UCLA Computer Science Department for over three years, under the direction of Dr. Gerald Popek. The project has also developed stackable file system layers, a mechanism for allowing easy extensibility of file system functionality. Ficus is a working system, and has been the primary system used to work on this project for several years. We have several technical reports and published papers about Ficus available for anonymous FTP.
The Truffles project is associated with the Ficus project. Truffles has been developed in conjunction with Trusted Information Systems. The Truffles project seeks to extend various services familiar to local area network users across wide area nets, like the Internet. The first such service is file sharing. Security is of vital importance to Truffles, so the file sharing service includes authentication of participants and encryption of data being transported across the net. We have several technical reports and published papers about Truffles available for anonymous FTP.
The Ficus project is currently working on a public domain, user-level implementation of the Ficus file system called Rumor. This software will allow any users at sites running Unix systems to set up shared replicated files between various sites, even if the only connectivity is by e-mail. When the software is sufficiently mature, we will release it through this Web site. We will also eventually release a purely user-level version of the Truffles file sharing service through this Web site.
In addition to Dr. Popek, many other people work on the Ficus project.