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Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

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Re: Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

#81

Post by zzo38computer »

Exmoor wrote: post #79
zzo38computer wrote: post #59

I think FTP isn't a very good protocol anyways. HTTP and Gopher are better. (HTTP does support most of the features, including authentication, uploads, etc. The thing HTTP doesn't have is proper directory listings; I wrote a document suggesting how this could be done, calling it "httpdirlist" specification; it is a new MIME type, and then each record is a list of records (formatted like a list of HTTP headers) separa…

I'm sorry, Gopher? Has anything outside of some incredibly archaic library system even used Gopher in the last 20 years? To me its one of those protocols that I only remember because I hope to use it to answer some trivia question someday. Right up there with Archie and Veronica.

Yes; Gopher is still in use, although not much. You could probably find a few Gopher servers still in use (I have found a few). I have my own Gopher server, too.

Re: Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

#82

Post by threatofrain »

RandyRanderson wrote: post #73
threatofrain wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious to me that Mozilla is doing anything very wrong, except for not having enough money to keep their browser experience as polished as Chrome's, and most importantly, they aren't marketing like Google. Google doesn't need their browser to make money, and Google advertises their browser in ways that Mozilla can't match. It's surprising that Mozilla can even be half-healthy.

500MM USD is not enough to build- sorry maintain a browser???? https://www.computerworld.com/article/3322912/mozillas-2017-...

Mozilla is already maintaining and improving Firefox while exploring other things like Rust, but they're not winning the war against Google. And improvement is relative -- to Google. Maintaining is losing, esp. while Google isn't just competing on browsers but also ecosystem.

Otherwise I'm sure Microsoft would like to be the winner.

And there are new users everyday. It makes sense that some of those new experiences are the system defaults, like Safari or Edge. It also makes sense that some of those experiences would be Chrome if you're in the Google ecosystem. But why Firefox? Privacy? I don't think that's bad, I just don't think it's enough vs Google.

Re: Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

#83

Post by majewsky »

m-p-3 wrote: post #26
liquidify wrote: post #3

I'm curious as to how many people use FTP in the browser?

Some files from Adobe are available on their ftp server, it's kind simple to get them through clicking a link than copying the path, opening up an FTP client, connecting, etc.

That sounds far more involved than just clicking "Save" on the browser's download dialog.

Re: Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

#84

Post by majewsky »

untog wrote: post #68
rolph wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should never trust telemetry or analytics to be unspoofed.

You’re suggesting there is a mass campaign to spoof Firefox telemetry and mask high levels of FTP usage?

Even if it's not spoofed, I would conjecture that the set of people using FTP has a large overlap with the set of people who disable telemetry.

Re: Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

#85

Post by weare138 »

duskwuff wrote: post #49
weare138 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the majority of people that still use FTP aren't relying on a browser for access but people still use it. Why not just deprecate standard FTP and only support FTPS and SFTP?

Because that'd amount to the same result as removing FTP. The "installed base" of web-accessible FTPS and SFTP resources is essentially zero, and that's unlikely to change -- if a web site was previously using FTP, they're probably going to move those resources to HTTP/S, not to another protocol which has limited browser support.

> The "installed base" of web-accessible FTPS and SFTP resources is essentially zero

Well that's true of SFTP, browsers don't support that protocol but I think they should. But FTP is still ubiquitous on the internet and most browsers like FF already support FTPS. To me it would make more sense to deprecate FTP like HTTP and warn users when their logging in over an insecure protocol than just kill the feature all together, especially if one of the primary reasons is because "Google did it". FTPS uses the same URI as FTP (ftp://). FTPS is common now, most people don't even realize they're using it. There are those of us that still need to deal with FTP and being able to click on a link in the browser rather than use a separate FTP client is just convenient. Just make it an optional feature and disable it by default.

Re: Mozilla will remove FTP support in Firefox

#86

Post by duskwuff »

weare138 wrote: post #85
duskwuff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that'd amount to the same result as removing FTP. The "installed base" of web-accessible FTPS and SFTP resources is essentially zero, and that's unlikely to change -- if a web site was previously using FTP, they're probably going to move those resources to HTTP/S, not to another protocol which has limited browser support.

> The "installed base" of web-accessible FTPS and SFTP resources is essentially zero Well that's true of SFTP, browsers don't support that protocol but I think they should. But FTP is still ubiquitous on the internet and most browsers like FF already support FTPS. To me it would make more sense to deprecate FTP like HTTP and warn users when their logging in over an insecure protocol than just kill the feature all tog…

> Well that's true of SFTP, browsers don't support that protocol but I think they should.

They should not. SSH -- which is used as the transport for SFTP -- is a rather large and complex protocol. Implementing it in browsers would significantly increase their network attack surface, while providing few (if any) new capabilities. (What does SFTP provide to the browser that isn't possible with HTTPS?)

> FTPS is common now, most people don't even realize they're using it.

Can you give an example? There are no major web browsers which currently support FTPS -- it is not present in Chrome, Mozilla, nor Internet Explorer.

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