HTTP is definitely not under active development... If someone wants to pick it up and work on it I'll provide what help I can. If you just want to serve files to a small group of people over HTTP you're probably better off setting up a number of other http servers..
On the other hand, you can create links to an anonymous ftp account, or even a regular account you only give download rights to, and post fully qualified ftp:\\ links that login to that account to access the files. Or point to directories and users can pick files. I've done that and it works fine, though I don't believe you can do that over SSL like you could with a real FTP client... Not really serving files over HTTP which is useful to get around firewalls, but it does allow you to put links to stuff on the FTP on a regular webpage you can direct your friends to