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Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#231

Post by billyhoffman »

antisol wrote: post #164
kragen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP has been related to web browsing since the beginning of the web 31 years ago. For maybe a decade (the first third of the web so far), most of the WWW was on FTP servers—not just most software downloads, but also most HTML pages. Web browsers are a much better interface to FTP servers than dedicated FTP clients, because you can click a link on an HTML page (either a statically generated directory, possibly on the…

I'd just like to add to this that ftp is a relatively simple protocol, not particularly complicated to implement. It's not a constantly fluctuating standard that requires a team of 50 developers to keep pace with. Supporting FTP isn't some big technical challenge. The code has been there in the firefox codebase for nearly 20 years now, running just fine. All you need to do to continue to support ftp is nothing at all…

> ftp is a relatively simple protocol, not particularly complicated to implement

Parts of it are, sure, but parts of it are an absolutely horror show (The client opens a port, and then the server connects back to it!?), text conversion and binary modes that's based on ASCII, different list formats, etc. It's not great. Worse, it doesn't support the good stuff like implicit TLS extensions

> Supporting FTP isn't some big technical challenge. The code has been there in the firefox codebase for nearly 20 years now, running just fine. All you need to do to continue to support ftp is nothing at all.

Not at all. Continuing to support FTP means continuing to defend attack surface that's implemented as 20 year-old code, to deliver a feature that in 2021 the majority of people do not use.

It's a cost-benefit analysis. I want Mozilla to do more. If they believe removing FTP support enables them to do more, I'll all for it.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#232

Post by SahAssar »

JackGreyhat wrote: post #230
SahAssar wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might just be not lurking in the right corners of the internet, but is there a specific reason for serving HTML over FTP vs serving HTML over HTTP? Not allowing FTP subresources on HTTPS is basically the same as not allowing HTTP subresources on HTTPS, that is just logical.

Not having to run a webserver? Some resources might be located on systems which do not support or allow it.

Is running a webserver different from running a ftp server? I've run both and never noticed much of a difference.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#233

Post by duskwuff »

classichasclass wrote: post #219
floatboth wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen FTP links for big downloads in the past. Never, not once have I seen HTML files served over FTP. Who in the hell ever did that?! WHY??

Here is a real world example: http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2019/08/chrome-murders-ftp-li...

A "real world example" involving a single HTML file (not even a web site, just a bare file!) from 1997 is pretty weak.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#234

Post by antisol »

josteink wrote: post #28
wlesieutre wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd be even more secure if they took away HTTP and HTTPS support

With us all being secured from Gopher already, that’s all that remains to establish a 100% secure browser.

Mozilla have been working hard on that for years now. Haven't you been watching their market share? One day they'll get to their holy grail of 0 users and no security problems.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#235

Post by kragen »

SahAssar wrote: post #196
kragen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP has been related to web browsing since the beginning of the web 31 years ago. For maybe a decade (the first third of the web so far), most of the WWW was on FTP servers—not just most software downloads, but also most HTML pages. Web browsers are a much better interface to FTP servers than dedicated FTP clients, because you can click a link on an HTML page (either a statically generated directory, possibly on the…

You're saying it was normal (and is even today) to show HTML files over ftp links? I've never seen a browser do HTML over ftp, and while I am a youngster compared to HTTP (I stared to do web stuff in the early 2000's) the sites where I've seen that had both HTTP and FTP modes the ftp mode only downloaded the file, it did not show it. > More broadly, this is a tradeoff between the traditional vision of the WWW as a va…

> I get the "strip-mall vision of the WWW as a means to sell people things they don't need" complaint, but that does not seem related to the protocol discussion of HTTP and FTP at all.

Web pages that are profit-making ventures, with employees dedicated to working around the latest browser featurectomies, will have no trouble with this sort of constant change. Web pages that are just HTML files that someone uploaded to a server in 02003 will disappear into the memory hole. They're already hard to find, but now they'll be totally inaccessible.

FTP is a bad protocol. HTTP servers are generally easier to run than FTP servers, and especially to run in a secure fashion. None of that is relevant to whether we should break functionality that has been core to the WWW project for 31 years.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#236

Post by JackGreyhat »

phkahler wrote: post #160
TheRealPomax wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> Your web browser doesn't need to support FTP. Your browser doesn't NEED to natively support .pdf but it does and you've probably used that feature. I mean you could have it launch an external .pdf viewer, which is a FAR more complex piece of software than the little FTP protocol code they're disabling here. Your browser doesn't NEED to support TABs. Your OS is already equipped with the ability to run multiple inst…

While you are completely right in your statements, I could argue that http and ftp are a means of transport and not part of UI or UX.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#237

Post by jedberg »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #216
jedberg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah actually it is. I’m a pretty technical user and use the web and the internet a lot. I can’t think of a scenario where I would need FTP in 2021. Can you point me at one?

I used ftp multiple times this year, mostly for getting technical documentation and firmware. Two examples from my browsing history from last month: ftp://ftp.kontron.com/Products/Motherboards/Industrial/D3544-S_Mini-STX/Documentation/ ftp://ftp.panasonic.com/pub/panasonic/call_center/firmware/ One advantage of ftp is that it is much easier to have access control on different resources than dealing with .htaccess fil…

Ok, that is a legit use case. It's been a long time since I've needed firmware that was FTP only, but I can see that possibility. But I still disagree with this:

> The consequence will be that many ftp servers still hosting software/firmware for legacy products will be taken down and their content lost.

Even if all the browsers dropped support for FTP, Finder and Explorer both have native FTP support, and there are plenty of clients otherwise. I doubt those resources will be taken offline.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#238

Post by JackGreyhat »

SahAssar wrote: post #232
JackGreyhat wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having to run a webserver? Some resources might be located on systems which do not support or allow it.

Is running a webserver different from running a ftp server? I've run both and never noticed much of a difference.

Well, I'm not saying running ftp to serve html is better. All I'm saying is that it can sometimes be the only supported option, or viable option. And there are major differences. Webserver access permissions vs. ftp server permissions for example?

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#239

Post by jedberg »

JackGreyhat wrote: post #201
jedberg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah actually it is. I’m a pretty technical user and use the web and the internet a lot. I can’t think of a scenario where I would need FTP in 2021. Can you point me at one?

http://web.mit.edu/~linux/redhat/docs/MIRRORS.html

Sure, but what is the use case of browsing that with a web browser? Both Finder and Explorer can natively support ftp, and there are plenty of other clients.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#240

Post by SergeAx »

I am a head of team of 20+ brilliant software engineers, who doing great things on a daily basis. When I being asked "What kind of code do the best of your team are writing?", here's a canned response: "The best engineers are deleting code, not writing it".

For software project with size and age of Firefox, deleting obsolete or redundant code is universally good. It is hard but necessary task. I am okay with completely stop using FTP for that cause. Or eventually fire up Chrome FWIW.

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