From: Michal Zalewski [lcamtuf@TPI.PL] Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 10:39 AM To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM Subject: Argante a r g a n t e p r o j e c t a n n o u n c e m e n t ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Brief introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We - a small group of computer security and programming enthusiasts - are proud to present a result of our hard work on making secure, functional, portable and effective environment, called "Argante". Although Argante is introducing completely new standards, architecture concepts and design basis, we believe it can find its place, both in dedicated and hybrid solutions, where Argante code is mixed with traditional components - especially in server software, secure distributed solutions / network monitoring and analysis software, distributed self-organizing clusters (at management / request propagation layer), virtual routers (for easy building of complex, fault-tolerant private networks from scratch) and so on, making such solutions simpler, more secure and stable - and, very often, more effective. So, in general, Argante might be a revolutionary (and low-cost) open-source solution for modern distributed network applications, allowing you to replace expensive, dedicated devices with heterogenic cloud of cheap boxes, quite often improving overall performance, and making management and development more intuitive and easier. On the other hand, Argante gives you just a new concept of OS environment, allowing you to develop any kind of code, including graphic applications or any other solutions. Why? 2. What is Argante? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you believe this GPL project is worth looking, we kindly suggest you starting at http://agt.buka.org/concept.html - this document describes fundamental Argante proposals, which, unfortunately, cannot be described in such short announcement. Note - Argante is based on concepts that are totally different from common solutions you should know - and quite often it's just shocking for people that used to C/Unix conventions or environments. We've provided a brief list of reasons why Argante, in our belief, provides something new and less or more useful. This list has been dramatically simplified, and, for sure, is not complete - but it's really short and readable. You might want to start at http://agt.buka.org/advocacy.txt :) Then, you can follow Argante documentation as well - it can be found at http://agt.buka.org/doc.html. This document explains how we reached our goals, and how Argante has been implemented. It also covers details on techniques offered by our solution and their use in complex applications / systems. You might find out Argante has some solutions similar to those used in eg. Inferno project from Lucent / Bell Labs. This is just a coincidence, because we tried not to base on any known solution. We believe we avoided some strange half-solutions, like moving high-level functionality to low-level layer with no good reason (and thus decreasing freedom of design and making overgrown code); we decided for such step only in specific, well-documented and explained cases, where we're sure it will offer some real good for the programmer without enforcing static, complex solutions where they are not necessary. 3. How can I download it? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Current Argante snapshot: http://agt.buka.org/download.html Official homepage: http://agt.buka.org Downloadable tarball contains source code for Argante, which is ported to IRIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and Linux; also, you'll find there some fully-featured examples, complete documentation (including API semantics) and companion tools. Argante project is still in a very, very premilinary phase. Some functionality still wait to be added - current code is a result of monthly loose cooperation betwen small group of people. We agreed it has enough functionality to be released to public, but - of course - we are still working on it. Especially, we cannot guarantee the implementation is completely bug-free, and we will appreciate any comments, suggestions and bugreports. Current development status - including scheduled concepts - can be found at: http://agt.buka.org/status.html. Your feedback will help us, so just feel free to tell me what do you think - even if you want to say "won't worth announcement". It's your decision if this project will be left to die, or will be developed in future. I have only one request - before asking a question, make sure you can't find the answer in documentation. We are already getting quite huge feedback from people asking "what is this for?" or "how XXX works?", while these issues are clearly stated in README. Thank you, Signed: Michal Zalewski, project coordinator Argante Development Team