On 6/22/2012 8:58 AM duncan smith said...
Hello, I have an application that would benefit from collaborative working. Over time users construct a "data environment" which is a number of files in JSON format contained in a few directories
You don't say what your target platform is, but on linux I've done some testing with python-fuse that allows interception on file access to take whatever actions you like, in your case archive prior upon write.
Might be worth a look. Emile -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list