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And it completely cut off older devices from being able to access content that often didn't need to be transferred over TLS.
by dmux 5y ago
And it completely cut off older devices from being able to access content that often didn't need to be transferred over TLS.
- tptacek 5y agoShrug! It's commercial infrastructure, not a fetish. You saw the same arguments when the Python Cryptography library started adopting Rust to replace memory-unsafe C code in their C library. People running, like, DEC Alphas in their basements for sport were furious. It was on the front page of HN for several days. It blew over, because nobody really cares about those people in a durable, meaningful way. Same situation with FTP. It's dead. Stick a fork in it.
- dmux 5y agoAbsolutely not the same situation. There are numerous mentions in this very thread about industries / sectors that still heavily rely on FTP. There's hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts that rely on data being transferred using that protocol. This isn't people enjoying retro computing. This is day-to-day operations.
- tptacek 5y agoAnd they'll make do without Firefox and Chrome, just like the DEC Alpha in the basement didn't explode when the Cryptography team moved away from C. For whatever it's worth: those industries should not be relying on FTP. FTP is bad. But I'm not advocating to ban it from the Internet; rather, I'm just saying, nobody should make software security compromises of any sort to continue supporting it.
- tedunangst 5y agoA hundred million dollars is probably sufficient to hire some consultants to maintain Firefox 89.