Upspin – Another option for file sharing

[Update] I've missed the upspin.io link, which wasn't in article. Now I see (unless I'm misunderstanding it) it's something similar to to Keybase Filesystem, except distributed. That's a good thing, then. My apologies for not getting this before writing the original comment.

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So... they had reinvented HTTP, and had thrown in some email-based authentication module, and formalized aeons-old /~username/ spec into /user@email.address.tld/?

Anyone with the HTTP server can host files. Traditionally, .htpasswd or similar measures were used for access controls. This seems to be different only in a sense that it uses emails (found no docs and too lazy to read the code).

I've glanced over the repo and I don't get what all that code is for. A re-implementation of webdavfs that maps first-level directories (emails) to hosts? Or... what? Can anyone link to some docs?

I noted the disclaimer: "Upspin is not an official Google product". Yet it is announced on the Google Blog? Is it a separate "skunk works" team effort?

Also, I note that they can set access levels based on email addresses, but I am unsure how that would work? Would those emails have to be linked to a Google account so that Upspin could check the currently logged in Google account to allow/disallow access to the files?

You're definitely missing a lot. Please take a look at the overview doc, it should be mostly explained here: https://upspin.io/doc/overview.md

One of the key elements of Upspin is that all content is signed and encrypted by the client. Sharing is totally in control of the content owners, and the servers need not be trusted at all.

Sounds a little like IPFS: a global file system based on end-to-end cryptographically verified files distributed through untrusted nodes. Anyone want to compare the two?

Similar in intention and scope to Keybase file sharing scheme.