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Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#51

Post by daxuak »

FTP might be dying in other sectors, but at least in biomed research, I would use FTP anyday when the alternative protocol needs a client app and a bunch of configurations. It's also handy when sharing data.

Browser support is important here because those files are often not explored from command line etc, but rather the FTP links are placed on individual pages as a quick download. At least for me, it's much more convinient to click and wget, than reading a page then switch window to query from API/client...

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#52

Post by tptacek »

sschueller wrote: post #43
tptacek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People made exactly the same arguments, almost to the letter, about universalizing TLS. The arguments were made in good faith, often by very clueful people, but it's hard to dispute the positive results of the change. FTP needs to go.

While we are at it, let's remove the domain name and replace it with something readable and maybe just default to Google without the ability to change your home or maybe Facebook. /s

You could have said that, too, about universal TLS.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#53

Post by zaat »

drewzero1 wrote: post #39
amelius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one day we can have a programming language that allows us to write software that doesn't rot or corrode.

We can start by writing software that doesn't have any features at all, and save ourselves the trouble of removing them later. /s

Here you go: https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#54

Post by gruez »

prepend wrote: post #12

This is frustrating. FTP is really handy for distributing some files and there are lots of servers in place that now Firefox users can’t access. One can argue that servers should upgrade, and that’s valid. But they don’t and they likely won’t do this just harms Firefox’s user base and is one more reason I no longer recommend Firefox. They just don’t seem user friendly as they once were. I would expect Mozilla to advo…

> This is frustrating. FTP is really handy for distributing some files and there are lots of servers in place that now Firefox users can’t access.

Why are people still using ftp rather than http?

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#55

Post by tomc1985 »

metalliqaz wrote: post #35
prepend wrote: post #12

This is frustrating. FTP is really handy for distributing some files and there are lots of servers in place that now Firefox users can’t access. One can argue that servers should upgrade, and that’s valid. But they don’t and they likely won’t do this just harms Firefox’s user base and is one more reason I no longer recommend Firefox. They just don’t seem user friendly as they once were. I would expect Mozilla to advo…

I'm a Firefox user, and Firefox doesn't support torrents. Yet, I can access torrents. Because of course you can have dedicated protocol handlers that do the job better than the download manager baked into the browser. Sure, there might be a user that doesn't know how to get a good FTP tool. But how many FTP servers are they accessing? Probably not enough of those to justify the maintenance effort.

The concern here is more that a lot of old websites embed ftp:// URLs into their links, which this will break.

Now they have to be handled by an external protocol handler, and I'd bet most of us don't have one set up, so things will be a little bumpy for a bit

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#56

Post by duskwuff »

prepend wrote: post #12

This is frustrating. FTP is really handy for distributing some files and there are lots of servers in place that now Firefox users can’t access. One can argue that servers should upgrade, and that’s valid. But they don’t and they likely won’t do this just harms Firefox’s user base and is one more reason I no longer recommend Firefox. They just don’t seem user friendly as they once were. I would expect Mozilla to advo…

> 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?

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#57

Post by daxuak »

MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote: post #7

I expect this to have very little impact on anything.

Check out NCBI, terabytes of public data are being shared on FTP servers. There are other protocols/APIs, but FTP has been a much better experience in many use cases. Those files are also linked all over the place in NCBI pages and elsewhere.

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Nicksil wrote: post #2

>If you are a Firefox user, you don’t have to do anything to benefit from this security advancement. The epitome of corporate speak: "we're taking away a feature of this software. You're welcome." I expect that kind of talk from Google; hearing it from Mozilla makes me a little sad.

[deleted]

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#59

Post by hobs »

icythere wrote: post #16

A friend asked me to help him to setup a FTP server for his b2b product a few weeks ago: Client just wanted that lolz. Luckily I could convince him to use ProFTPD with sftp http://proftpd.org/docs/contrib/mod_sftp.html . This is very neat as the service runs on their own ssh-alike port.

ftp and ftps are alive and well in the enterprise b2b space, but also most people dont use web browsers to access it so /shrug

Re: Stopping FTP support in Firefox 90

#60

Post by mmastrac »

daxuak wrote: post #51

FTP might be dying in other sectors, but at least in biomed research, I would use FTP anyday when the alternative protocol needs a client app and a bunch of configurations. It's also handy when sharing data. Browser support is important here because those files are often not explored from command line etc, but rather the FTP links are placed on individual pages as a quick download. At least for me, it's much more con…

Why not rsync, scp, https, or any other plethora of much better alternatives?
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