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Do you remember that chrome lost FTP support recently? The protocol was widely used and simple enough.

chb 1y ago
Widely used? By whom? Devs who don't understand rsync or scp? Give me a practical scenario where a box is running FTP but not SSH. Edit: then account for the fact that this rare breed of content uploader doesn't use an FTP client... there's absolutely no reason to have FTP client code in a browser. It's an attack surface that is utterly unnecessary.
- Demiurge 1y ago
  Also, the protocol is pretty much a holdover from the earliest days, before encryption, or complicated NATs. I remember using it with just telnet a few times. It's pretty cool, but absolutely nobody should be using FTP these days. I remember saying this back in the 2005, and here we are 20 years later, someone still lamenting dropping FTP support from a browser? I think we're decades overdue.
  - tracker1 1y ago
    I'm not lamenting it being removed.. but will say that it was probably a huge multiple more popular and widely used than XSLT is in the browser.
    - Demiurge 1y ago
      I'm genuinely curious about that. But, this says a lot more about how different these standards are. FTP really needed a good successor, which it never really got. So, there is a strong use case, but technical deficiency to the protocol. So, FTP was overcome by a meriad of web forms and web drive sites, as a way to fill the gap. Still, resumable chunked uploads are really hard to implement from scratch, even now. Dropping XSLT is about something different. It's not bad an in an obvious way. It's things like code complexity vs applicability. It's definitely not as clear of an argument to me, and I haven't touched XSLT in the past 20 years of web development, so I am not sure about the trade-offs.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    I worked for a company where I had to make screenshots every minute and upload them via FTP for review to get paid. If there was multiple screenshots with the same thing on the screen, there would be questions.
    - ErroneousBosh 1y ago
      Did you do any work besides taking screenshots and trying to figure out why FTP was broken this time? Your old job's broken workflow is not a good reason for keeping a fundamentally broken protocol that relies on allowing Remote Code Execution as a privileged user around.
      - koakuma-chan 1y ago
        I wrote a tool that took screenshots automatically and used FileZilla to upload :) And my comment is in support of removing FTP because it was lame.
        ErroneousBosh 1y ago
        Aha, fair. Why the hell did they need you to do that? I used to work in a web dev job where when they brought in "time tracking" they wanted everyone to update a spreadsheet with what they were doing every half an hour. A spreadsheet, as literally a .xls, on a shared Windows drive. Everyone spent more time waiting for access to the spreadsheet than they did doing any work. This situation persisted for about two weeks, and the manager that came up with the genius idea about two weeks longer than that, before we eventually told the other managers we were downing tools and leaving if he didn't either get "promoted to customer" or lay off the charlie during work hours.
        koakuma-chan 1y ago
        > Why the hell did they need you to do that? Because it's was a shitty company and I only worked there for one month. I absolutely hate any type of time tracking or attempts to micro manage.
  - grumbel 1y ago
    The problem wasn't that FTP got deprecated, but that we never got a proper successor. With FTP you could browse a directory tree like it was a real file system. With HTTP you can't, it has no concept of a directory. rsync is the closest thing to a real successor, but no Web browser support that either.
    - Demiurge 1y ago
      I agree that we should get a successor, but if it got deprecated way back, I think we would have more likely gotten one. For just downloads, I have used apache and nginx directory and file listing functionality with ease.
    - catdog 1y ago
      There would be WebDAV which adds such features to HTTP but that's also not supported by web browsers.
- tracker1 1y ago
  Linking to an FTP file from a web page.
- altmind 1y ago
  People who navigate ftp storage maybe? Like Linux repos?
- superkuh 1y ago
  By many scientific and educational organizations for distribution of data. Places where the outcome matters and the way to achieve it doesn't. An FTP client in a browser is incomparibly smaller attack surface than, say, executing every random program sent to you by arbitrary third parties (javascript).
ErroneousBosh 1y ago
"Was" is the key here. FTP has been obsolete for 20 years.
- altmind 1y ago
  People are confusing obsolete with stable and feature complete.
  - ErroneousBosh 1y ago
    Right, but ftp is neither of these things. Can you describe any real-world application where ftp is the best solution for a problem anyone has right now? Consider the impact of an internet-exposed service that allows unauthenticated clients to remotely run code as root on your server.

chb 1y ago

Widely used? By whom? Devs who don't understand rsync or scp? Give me a practical scenario where a box is running FTP but not SSH. Edit: then account for the fact that this rare breed of content uploader doesn't use an FTP client... there's absolutely no reason to have FTP client code in a browser. It's an attack surface that is utterly unnecessary.

Demiurge 1y ago
Also, the protocol is pretty much a holdover from the earliest days, before encryption, or complicated NATs. I remember using it with just telnet a few times. It's pretty cool, but absolutely nobody should be using FTP these days. I remember saying this back in the 2005, and here we are 20 years later, someone still lamenting dropping FTP support from a browser? I think we're decades overdue.
- tracker1 1y ago
  I'm not lamenting it being removed.. but will say that it was probably a huge multiple more popular and widely used than XSLT is in the browser.
  - Demiurge 1y ago
    I'm genuinely curious about that. But, this says a lot more about how different these standards are. FTP really needed a good successor, which it never really got. So, there is a strong use case, but technical deficiency to the protocol. So, FTP was overcome by a meriad of web forms and web drive sites, as a way to fill the gap. Still, resumable chunked uploads are really hard to implement from scratch, even now. Dropping XSLT is about something different. It's not bad an in an obvious way. It's things like code complexity vs applicability. It's definitely not as clear of an argument to me, and I haven't touched XSLT in the past 20 years of web development, so I am not sure about the trade-offs.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  I worked for a company where I had to make screenshots every minute and upload them via FTP for review to get paid. If there was multiple screenshots with the same thing on the screen, there would be questions.
  - ErroneousBosh 1y ago
    Did you do any work besides taking screenshots and trying to figure out why FTP was broken this time? Your old job's broken workflow is not a good reason for keeping a fundamentally broken protocol that relies on allowing Remote Code Execution as a privileged user around.
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      I wrote a tool that took screenshots automatically and used FileZilla to upload :) And my comment is in support of removing FTP because it was lame.
      - ErroneousBosh 1y ago
        Aha, fair. Why the hell did they need you to do that? I used to work in a web dev job where when they brought in "time tracking" they wanted everyone to update a spreadsheet with what they were doing every half an hour. A spreadsheet, as literally a .xls, on a shared Windows drive. Everyone spent more time waiting for access to the spreadsheet than they did doing any work. This situation persisted for about two weeks, and the manager that came up with the genius idea about two weeks longer than that, before we eventually told the other managers we were downing tools and leaving if he didn't either get "promoted to customer" or lay off the charlie during work hours.
        koakuma-chan 1y ago
        > Why the hell did they need you to do that? Because it's was a shitty company and I only worked there for one month. I absolutely hate any type of time tracking or attempts to micro manage.
- grumbel 1y ago
  The problem wasn't that FTP got deprecated, but that we never got a proper successor. With FTP you could browse a directory tree like it was a real file system. With HTTP you can't, it has no concept of a directory. rsync is the closest thing to a real successor, but no Web browser support that either.
  - Demiurge 1y ago
    I agree that we should get a successor, but if it got deprecated way back, I think we would have more likely gotten one. For just downloads, I have used apache and nginx directory and file listing functionality with ease.
  - catdog 1y ago
    There would be WebDAV which adds such features to HTTP but that's also not supported by web browsers.
tracker1 1y ago
Linking to an FTP file from a web page.
altmind 1y ago
People who navigate ftp storage maybe? Like Linux repos?
superkuh 1y ago
By many scientific and educational organizations for distribution of data. Places where the outcome matters and the way to achieve it doesn't. An FTP client in a browser is incomparibly smaller attack surface than, say, executing every random program sent to you by arbitrary third parties (javascript).

ErroneousBosh 1y ago

"Was" is the key here. FTP has been obsolete for 20 years.

altmind 1y ago
People are confusing obsolete with stable and feature complete.
- ErroneousBosh 1y ago
  Right, but ftp is neither of these things. Can you describe any real-world application where ftp is the best solution for a problem anyone has right now? Consider the impact of an internet-exposed service that allows unauthenticated clients to remotely run code as root on your server.