[skierpage]

> It is odd they do not use URLs (or URIs) with 'upspin' scheme.

Yes it is. An Upspin file path like [e-mail]/dir/file is not obviously part of any scheme. If Upspin takes off, all the automagic parsing of plain text (that makes [e-mail] and news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc automatically turn into a clickable e-mail link and an HTTP URL) could be extended to turn [e-mail]/dir/file into a link that fires up a GUI to the Upspin service. The problem is that the file path also looks like an HTTP/S URL for https://example.com/dir/file specifying the username ann, so copying it into your browser's location bar without a scheme is fundamentally ambiguous.

Even though Upspin uses HTTPS for its API (e.g. https://store.upspin.io/api/Store/Get/something), there doesn't seem to be an HTTPS URL for access to a particular file. Since [e-mail] is by design just an email identifier disconnected from the directory server and storage server that ann uses to store her files, clients can't skip the root key server and talk to example.com to request ann's files, even though in some cases it will be the same server name.