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I am a big fan of both Upspin and Keybase. In my view they are quite different. 1) Polish vs Openness: - Keybase is a polished product and a closed identity p

by shykes 9y ago

I am a big fan of both Upspin and Keybase. In my view they are quite different. 1) Polish vs Openness: - Keybase is a polished product and a closed identity platform; - Upspin is open-source plumbing and an (almost) open platform. 2) Focus - Keybase is a crypto identity platform which happens to have a file storage app; - Upspin is a file storage platform which happens to have a crypto identify feature. Note: I call Upspin "almost open" because it does not support running your own key server in a private namespace. All users must use the same public key server. In exchange for a slightly less open platform, Upspin gets a strong guarantee of a single global namespace, which is a really great feature for end users. I think it's great that the project is clear about its priorities and the tradeoffs it's willing to make, and communicates them upfront.

4ad 9y ago
Of course you can trivially run your own key server and your own upspin universe. But then of course, you can't talk with other people. The problem with upspin is that there's a SPOC keyserver, not that there's a single namespace. You could trivially have a single global namespace with many delegated keyservers using DNS. You know, like e-mail. But the authors unfortunately don't want that.