Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#41

Post by anyfoo » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #30

georgebarnett wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need a separate legacy protocol for file transfers? What’s the benefit in keeping protocols for the sake of it?

FTP is basically useful as a single-use protocol: file transfer only. File transfer only allows a more stripped-down, dedicated server with better security. Vsftpd and others have excellent security specifically tailored to permission-based file transfers with access control lists etc. You will rarely find a comparable http option. It's not perfect, but there are also good partes and reasons why it's still around. Se…

As written in another comment, you will find FTP to actually be a truly horrendous protocol, at least from today's perspective. I'm not sure there is anything that FTP offers, that the rsync or sftp, for example, offer much better (or simply HTTP if it's only in one direction), and then some.

SFTP is actually not just FTP over SSH. The protocol is different precisely to get rid of a lot of the outdated nuisances.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#42

Post by __s » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #22

morpheuskafka wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said for HTTP... FTPS and SFTP do exist. That said, I agree that its outmoded today.

You'd think it's outmoded, but when the systems you're integrating with provide and expect multi-gigabyte files, the ability to append to a single file in a straightforward way and get some posix-ish APIs becomes a real life saver.

Where is your use case involving Chrome?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#43

Post by mlyle » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 3:58 AM UTC

kart23 wrote: post #24

subsubsub wrote: post #4

Google don't want users, they want pliant consumers. The idea that young people know more about tech than their parents will become less and less true in the future.

I saw a 6th grader using filezilla to update his website the other day. 99% of people didnt know what ftp was 10 years ago, that hasn't changed. Every generation loves to trash the one below it, that certainly will never change.

I think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days.

Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user.

Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-- especially at an early age.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#44

Post by mlyle » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:01 AM UTC

darrenf wrote: post #39

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a bank (opinions my own) and nearly everything we do (including modernization, but especially partnership communications) is FTP-based. It's just about the only real standard available when the code is older than most of the devs. We do use modern encryption and mutual TLS to authenticate and encrypt everything, including before password transmission when that's even an option, but FTP is still the backbone…

I too work at a company/in an industry where FTP (incl. sftp/ftps) is still crucial, for both inbound and outbound transfers. A great many of our partners would find using other protocols more cumbersome. Automating the download/upload of entire directories of arbitrarily named files seems considerably easier/to require less code than any solution over HTTP might (log in, perhaps change directory, `prompt`, then `mge…

Lots of SFTP clients are good at mput.

If we're limiting ourselves to HTTP, WebDAV is pretty nice and has builtin support across Windows, Mac, and most Linux distributions.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#45

Post by rrdharan » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:01 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #35

toby- wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely, but Google don't care about "nice to have"; if it doesn't ultimately make them money, they couldn't care in the slightest, yet people here will often applaud this attitude as if it were progress.

It is progress though. FTP is insecure, and worse still it breaks the security model of HTTPS (see article for more info). Plus additional code paths could be sources of bugs/exploits, particularly old/rarely updated ones.

Moreover it's not implausible (I'd wager it's actually likely) that HP and other websites still relying on FTP will be pressured to actually fix their sites and switch to something more secure once Chrome drops support.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#46

Post by sophiebits » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:03 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #43

kart23 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a 6th grader using filezilla to update his website the other day. 99% of people didnt know what ftp was 10 years ago, that hasn't changed. Every generation loves to trash the one below it, that certainly will never change.

I think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days. Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user. Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-…

You used to need a certain amount of technical competence to be literate. Now we teach everyone to read and write! What is the world coming to?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#47

Post by anyfoo » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:06 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #31

m463 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not a great protocol.

It is definitely a product of its time. Even FTPS isn't very good. SFTP is though (poorly named, it is based on SSH rather than the FTP protocol), but no web browser that I know of supports SFTP.

Yeah. Even though I remember a lot of the reasons for FTPs weirdness back then, looking at it below the cover today, it's a similar feeling as operating a mechanic calculating machine. Interesting, weird, with unfamiliar concepts, but you wouldn't do it like that anymore.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#48

Post by jimmaswell » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:09 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #35

toby- wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely, but Google don't care about "nice to have"; if it doesn't ultimately make them money, they couldn't care in the slightest, yet people here will often applaud this attitude as if it were progress.

It is progress though. FTP is insecure, and worse still it breaks the security model of HTTPS (see article for more info). Plus additional code paths could be sources of bugs/exploits, particularly old/rarely updated ones.

You can justify removing anything with "less code paths." I hate that argument. Don't care about FTP being insecure either. Google's just being hostile to the open web as usual and getting the usual applause.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#49

Post by anyfoo » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:09 AM UTC

darrenf wrote: post #39

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a bank (opinions my own) and nearly everything we do (including modernization, but especially partnership communications) is FTP-based. It's just about the only real standard available when the code is older than most of the devs. We do use modern encryption and mutual TLS to authenticate and encrypt everything, including before password transmission when that's even an option, but FTP is still the backbone…

I too work at a company/in an industry where FTP (incl. sftp/ftps) is still crucial, for both inbound and outbound transfers. A great many of our partners would find using other protocols more cumbersome. Automating the download/upload of entire directories of arbitrarily named files seems considerably easier/to require less code than any solution over HTTP might (log in, perhaps change directory, `prompt`, then `mge…

SFTP is different from FTP, though. As far as I know, it's a fine protocol.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#50

Post by tim58 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

morpheuskafka wrote: post #8

I'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.

I'm not fine with this.

I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment.

There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change? Many well maintained webpages will have to expend resources to migrate off ftp. Less maintained webpages with FTP links will not be updated and put the burden of installing an FTP client on the user, reducing accessibility.

This is Google externalizing the cost of updating their software by forcing everyone else to update their webpages to following Google's specification.