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Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#131

Post by Symbiote »

qubidt wrote: post #124
duskwuff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are lots of [FTP] servers in place... Define "lots". Chrome dropped FTP support in late 2020 and basically nobody noticed. The vast majority of the remaining public FTP servers are also accessible over HTTP. > I would expect Mozilla to advocate for more FTP as a cheap way of distributing files. In what sense is FTP "cheap"? What makes it any different from HTTP in that regard?

> Define "lots" a ton of government and scientific datasets are provided over FTP

The majority are also available on HTTP.

It saves a lot of confused users at other government / scientific institutions, where the firewall blocks FTP.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#133

Post by tyingq »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #117
tyingq wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's old, but "ftp://" is a valid uri scheme that has established use, and lots of valid links on existing, live web pages. Browsers removing support are breaking part of the web that was working fine.

No, they're breaking with accessing a part of the internet that web browsers used to support, an no one does anymore. They are most certainly not break the web itself. These are different things: if you need FTP (and let's be real: you don't), then as a user you still have TONS of options available to you, and as a host even legacy systems using ancient versions of Apache can already serve file listings as standard w…

It's probably the largest in-use uri scheme they have dropped. At the very least, there should be better error handling. For me on Chrome/Windows, ftp:// uris just don't do anything[1]. No error, they are just inoperable links. Yes, I could fix that, but for average users, that part of whatever you want to call it could just disappear silently.

[1] Because the default handler for ftp:// was originally Chrome on my system, which is pretty common. Chrome dropping it didn't change that mapping.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#134

Post by dmux »

tptacek wrote: post #127
dmux wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it completely cut off older devices from being able to access content that often didn't need to be transferred over TLS.

Shrug! 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 situatio…

Absolutely 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.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#135

Post by martin1975 »

I think this is a bad idea - many URLs are encoded as ftp still, e.g. when downloading tarballs, zips and such - does this mean clicking on an FTP URL now will require launching an external ftp app instead of downloading the file? I'm ok if FTP browsing is suspended through the browser, but abandoning FTP altogether in the browser is a bad idea. It's an old protocol and still very useful, albeit not in its unencrypted state maybe, but it does do a good job of what it's supposed to - namely, transfer files.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#136

Post by estaseuropano »

keyme wrote: post #91

Reminds me of Apple removing the headphone jack and being so proud of themselves for "being brave". Just yesterday I found a link to FTP while researching something. Was pretty annoying to go get another FTP client up and running to get it. Anyway, the movement away from unencrypted protocols to TLS-only is moving us closer to a fully censored internet. Sure, an unencrypted internet did not have any integrity guarant…

But Apple removed it to charge Mord for dedicated headphones. While Mozilla removes it to delete a Malware vector and/or save programming resources.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#137

Post by mmastrac »

jacquesm wrote: post #83
_e wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, good point. Gopher is internet browsing too but is Firefox the best way to experience FTP and Gopher? How many different protocols should Firefox support? Firefox does not have the same resources as Google so focusing on what Firefox is known to do best such as HTTP and its supporting protocols, like WebSocket, really well looks like a good strategy.

On many systems it is now the only way.

I just checked my Windows 10 machine and it still has the FTP command-line program built in. What proportion of machines have Firefox but no FTP command-line program (or a "finder"/"explorer" that doesn't support FTP)? I cannot imagine this number is large.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#138

Post by krylon »

This makes a little sad, but only a little. I honestly do not remember when I last accessed an FTP server from a browser.

I do use FTP every now and then, but I do so from the command line or file manager like mc (or far manager when I am on Windows). Even there, it has been declining steadily, though, because ssh/sftp works pretty well as a drop-in replacement, unless one of the endpoints is so low-end the encryption becomes a throughput bottleneck. But it's been many years since I've had that problem.

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