That's the new and improved version of FTP! Before "passive mode" the old one would try and directly connect with your machine on some random port. If you were

That's the new and improved version of FTP! Before "passive mode" the old one would try and directly connect with your machine on some random port. If you were behind a NAT firewall you couldn't use it at all. On top of that there's never been a coherent standard for what directory listings are supposed to look like so there's no reliable way to emit directories in a machine readable format. It's always been arbitrary text. The whole thing is junk and has deserved to die the day it was born.