Initial commit.

Initial commit.

This project was started in late 2018. A first usable version was
ready by 2019-02 and was deployed on a single server, Until 2022-05,
the project languished but the trial version had had been running all
the time. This identified the major design and usability shortcomings
which have been addressed subsequently. This work resulted in a much
improved but incompatible version.

Starting in late 2022, the improved version was deployed on several
storage servers, which revealed a few minor bugs and usability issues,
all of which have been addressed.

As of this commit the project has been made public. All commits that
led to the improved version have been discarded, so the repository
contains only the final result as a single initial commit.

From now on, backward incompatible changes are avoided if possible,
and require a deprecation period and a major version change otherwise.
Also subsequent changes will be documented properly.