Merge pull request #104 from philips/cleanup-README

Cleanup readme

README.md

@@ -1,19 +1,49 @@
-[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/benbjohnson/go-raft.png?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/benbjohnson/go-raft)
-
 go-raft
 =======
 
+[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/benbjohnson/go-raft.png?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/benbjohnson/go-raft)
+
 ## Overview
 
 This is an Go implementation of the Raft distributed consensus protocol.
 Raft is a protocol by which a cluster of nodes can maintain a replicated state machine.
 The state machine is kept in sync through the use of a replicated log.
 
-For more details on Raft, you can read [In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm](https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/11370504/raft.pdf) by Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout.
+For more details on Raft, you can read [In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm][raft-paper] by Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout.
 
+## Project Status
+
+This library is feature complete but should be considered experimental until it has seen more usage.
+If you have any questions on implementing go-raft in your project please file an issue.
+There is an [active community][community] of developers who can help.
+go-raft is under the MIT license.
+
+[community]: https://github.com/benbjohnson/go-raft/contributors
+
+### Features
+
+- Leader election
+- Log replication
+- Configuration changes
+- Log compaction
+- Unit tests
+- Fast Protobuf Log Encoding
+- HTTP transport
+
+### Projects
+
+These projects are use go-raft:
+
+- [coreos/etcd](https://github.com/coreos/etcd) - A highly-available key value store for shared configuration and service discovery
+- [benbjohnson/raftd](https://github.com/benbjohnson/raftd) - A reference implementation for using the go-raft library for distributed consensus.
+
+If you have a project that you're using go-raft in, please add it to this README so others can see implementation examples.
 
 ## The Raft Protocol
 
+This section provides a short simple summary of the Raft protocol from a high level.
+For a more detailed explanation on the failover process and election terms please see the full paper describing the protocol: [In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm][raft-paper].
+
 ### Overview
 
 Maintaining state in a single process on a single server is easy.
@@ -26,7 +56,7 @@ Servers can crash or the network between two machines can become unavailable or
 A distributed consensus protocol is used for maintaining a consistent state across multiple servers in a cluster.
 Many distributed systems are built upon the Paxos protocol but Paxos can be difficult to understand and there are many gaps between Paxos and real world implementation.
 
-An alternative is the [Raft distributed consensus protocol](https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/11370504/raft.pdf) by Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout.
+An alternative is the [Raft distributed consensus protocol][raft-paper] by Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout.
 Raft is a protocol built with understandability as a primary tenant and it centers around two things:
 
 1. Leader Election
@@ -53,17 +83,9 @@ By ensuring that this log is replicated identically between all the nodes in the
 Replicating the log under normal conditions is done by sending an `AppendEntries` RPC from the leader to each of the other servers in the cluster (called Peers).
 Each peer will append the entries from the leader through a 2-phase commit process which ensure that a majority of servers in the cluster have entries written to log.
 
-For a more detailed explanation on the failover process and election terms please see the full paper describing the protocol: [In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm](https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/11370504/raft.pdf)
+## History
 
+Ben Johnson started this library for use in his behavioral analytics database called [Sky](https://github.com/skydb/sky).
+He put it under the MIT license in the hopes that it would be useful for other projects too.
 
-## Project Status
+[raft-paper]: https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/11370504/raft.pdf
-
-The go-raft library is feature complete but in alpha.
-There is a reference implementation called [raftd](https://github.com/benbjohnson/raftd) that demonstrates how to use the library 
-
-The library will be considered experimental until it has significant production usage.
-I'm writing the library for the purpose of including distributed processing in my behavioral analytics database called [Sky](https://github.com/skydb/sky).
-However, I hope other projects can benefit from having a distributed consensus protocol so the go-raft library is available under MIT license.
-
-If you have a project that you're using go-raft in, please add it to this README and send a pull request so others can see implementation examples.
-If you have any questions on implementing go-raft in your project, feel free to contact me on [GitHub](https://github.com/benbjohnson), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/benbjohnson) or by e-mail at [ben@skylandlabs.com](mailto:ben@skylandlabs.com).