Have you looked at the spec? If you do, then you'll understand. Imagine a file transfer protocol that defines the command to list files in a folder, but does n

Have you looked at the spec? If you do, then you'll understand. Imagine a file transfer protocol that defines the command to list files in a folder, but does not specify the format of the response other that it should be human-readable. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt LIST and NLST commands for example. No way to get a standard list of files with sizes and modification dates. yay! Oh, and the data connection that is made from the server to the client. That works wonders with firewalls of today. It was an ok spec when it was invented, but today it's very painful to operate.