Google Releases Open Source File Sharing Project 'Upspin' On GitHub (betanews.com)

BrianFagioli quotes a report from BetaNews: Today, Google unveiled yet another way to share files. Called "Upspin," the open source project aims to make sharing easier for home users. With that said, the project does not seem particularly easy to set up or maintain. For example, it uses Unix-like directories and email addresses for permissions. While it may make sense to Google engineers, I am dubious that it will ever be widely used. "Upspin looks a bit like a global file system, but its real contribution is a set of interfaces, protocols, and components from which an information management system can be built, with properties such as security and access control suited to a modern, networked world. Upspin is not an "app" or a web service, but rather a suite of software components, intended to run in the network and on devices connected to it, that together provide a secure, modern information storage and sharing network," says Google. The search giant adds: "Upsin is a layer of infrastructure that other software and services can build on to facilitate secure access and sharing. This is an open source contribution, not a Google product. We have not yet integrated with the Key Transparency server, though we expect to eventually, and for now use a similar technique of securely publishing all key updates. File storage is inherently an archival medium without forward secrecy; loss of the user's encryption keys implies loss of content, though we do provide for key rotation."

Comments

written in Go

[Gravis Zero]

It seems interesting but admittedly I stopped looking into it when I learned that it is written in Go. The problem is less with the language and more about the fact that it will radically reduce the number of people that will work on it, especially long term. I don't know what the future is but I think Go will go the way of Ruby: a language du jour.

Re:written in Go

[squiggleslash]

I don't think real developers care. As long as it's not written in LISP or some other language that's radically different from normal paradigms, and as long as the development environment is just a matter of checking some options in their favorite IDE, most programmers will be entirely happy.

You grossly underestimate the ability of decent programmers to switch from language to language. What we care about is not whether a language is rarely used, but whether it can do what we need it to easily and quickly - and whether the libraries are easily googlelable of course.

Go is a mainstream language, if a little basic. It's fine. That won't be the problem.

Re:written in Go

[gwolf]

Ruby is a beautifully designed language, a pleasure to code in. Even if I cannot stand the Rails Culture and its general attitude, learning Ruby changed me as a programmer. As long as I'm not the only one, Ruby will continue to be used.

Re:Unix-like directories?

[squiggleslash]

This must be why Macs have a reputation of being so hard to use. No drive letters. /s

Unix-like directories and Go whining? Stop it.

[adosch]

An upfront caveat: I haven't spun up Upspin yet, but I did look at the code for about 15 minutes on Github. So I guess I haven't launched it.

I do have to merely shit on Brian Fagioli at BetaNews here: stick with objective reporter and keep your less-than-technical biased opinion out of the article, FFS. All that wanking about 'Unix-like directories' and written in 'Go' just proves your ignorance in the world of tech in general. My advice is, for starters, stop being a tech reporter and referring to yourself as 'submersed in technology' because you are clearly a posing douchey idiot. What world IS NOT built successfully on a 'Unix-like directory structure' and using a bleeding edge language like 'Go'?

Go is a fantastic language for any sort of platform-friendly deployment; I'm been using it almost exclusively for very system-heavy development that I need to port seamlessly between lots of UNIX platform variants. What's the problem with that?

Well Brian, to wrap your head around things you can relate to, better toss that MacBook you authored your article on (BSD-variant and Unix-like directory structure), stop watching Netflix (hosted on Linux and some distributed POSIX-friendly Unix-like filesystem), don't put anything on Dropbox anymore (hosted on Linux and some distributed POSIX-friendly Unix-like filesystem). Get my point? Stop whining. Just because it's over your head, doesn't mean it's not over anyone elses.

Re:Unix-like directories?

[MightyMartian]

Drive letters are by and large a hangover from CP/M and DOS, and could have been eliminated, or at least deprecated as early as Windows NT 3.5. Frankly, driver letter are completely ludicrous, to the point of being outright annoying. I've had local storage devices knock out drive shares, as an example of how utterly stupid the system is. We're literally dealing with a 40+ year old file device paradigm that only exists because MS seems completely unwilling to accept that Unix does it better.

Re:no one asked for this

[MightyMartian]

I guess one could possibly integrate into some sort of home filesharing appliance, although my limited experience with this kind of hardware suggests they already have their own variations on this. Perhaps not quite the same level of security, but I fail to see why that would matter that much in a home setting. I guess someone could build an cloud app with it, but then again, there are already lots of those around.

vanity

[qQ7eBMsfM5gs]

Another vanity product from Google. Yay!

Plan9?

[krisbrowne42]

This looks like it's an attempt to resurrect the 9P philosophies, bolting on a wider security framework.

A quick look at contributors confirms Rob Pike and Dave Presotto among them, who was among the key personalities at Bell Labs working on Plan9, all but confirming the lineage. As I recall, some of the same folks are behind Go.

What are the odds this has a different future than Plan9?