Google Just Open-Sourced A Project That Can Change The Way You Share Files

 

Technology has come out in a long way in facilitating human a lot in day to day life.One of the most important advancement is the way technology making it possible to share files with each other from around the world using the many cloud storage services that we can find.


Believe it or not, in 2017, file-sharing between individuals is not a particularly easy affair. Quite frankly, I had a better experience more than a decade ago sending things to friends and family using AOL Instant Messenger. Nowadays, everything is so fragmented, that it can be hard to share.


A new open source project for file sharing called Upspin has recently surfaced online. Although announced by Google, Upspin is not an official Google product. The project even has an official mascot named Augie.


Upspin is an attempt to make file sharing easy and secure. It proposes global namespace implementation using the email addresses of the users.The Google engineers who are behind this unconventional file sharing framework – not an app or web service – have realized the tedious file sharing process offered by major platforms. One big issue is the long file name and the interoperability. For instance, one can’t directly post a Facebook photo on Twitter. It has to be downloaded and re-uploaded.

All the file sharing is done with the help of user’s email address. The path to a file shared by a user looks like the slash-separated file paths Unix, ann@example.com/dir/file. Using an Upspin service, other people can reach the shared file using its path.

For example assuming my email address is syed@techymindplay.com,with previous route we would globally identify the contents of my computer and allowing the receiving user to access the documents/office folder.

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When using Upspin,this service would recognize the address and do all the work to locate and access the file or folder as is the case.But what we have to do to indicate who is allowed to access this location?


Directory access permissions to other users can be given with the help of their respective email addresses. An Access file containing read: mustafa@here.com, siddique@there.com can be added in the directory to be shared.

 
Upspin’s creators say it can be included as a layer of infrastructure in other software and services to enable secure file sharing. If one has an Upspin name, shared data can be copied from anywhere on a network “without download and upload.” This is in contrast to what we have seen in the case of cloud-based file sharing services.It will be good to see how it will help in the enterprises but the creator are targeting personal user and family.

Upspin is not yet a rogram nor does it intend to be.It presented as a service which devlopers can use to integrate it into their programs and establish a fast and unified way of sharing files.It remains to be seen if the idea will succeed and how it will be implemented.

You can read more about the Upspin open source project in the official documentation. The Github Upspin repo is a mirror, you can find the original repo here.