What is Camlistore?

Camlistore is:

• a way to store, sync, share, model and back up content
• a work in progress
• Open Source (Apache licensed)
• an acronym for "Content-Addressable Multi-Layer Indexed Storage", hinting that Camlistore is about:
  • content-addressable storage
  • separate interoperable parts (storage, sync, sharing, modeling), with well-defined protocols and roles
• your "home directory for the web"
• pro-JSON (yet aggressively format agnostic)
• pro-OpenPGP (for signing claims)
• pro-paranoia and privacy
• ambitious, but ...
• simple!
• programming language-agnostic (parts and different implementations in Go, Python, Java, Perl, Bash, ... the language doesn't matter.) What matters is well-defined, simple HTTP interfaces.
• neither "Cloud" nor "Local". happily both.
• a "20% project" from a few Google employees, but not Google-centric nor endorsed by Google (other than them letting us open source our side project)
• ready for developers (at least those without strong color preferences)

but, is...

• not yet ready for users
• not a typical peer-to-peer system or DHT
• not (yet?) a "MySQL alternative"
• not necessarily a product in itself (e.g., not Drupal)
• not necessarily a replacement for S3-like storage

Recent presentation

See http://camlistore.org/talks/2011-05-07-Camlistore-Sao-Paolo/.

There's also this older presentation.