On the apparently looming death of FTP
--------------------------------------
About a week ago I noticed somebody mention on a mailing list I'm subscribed to
that Google's Chrome browser is soon to start flagging FTP URLs as insecure to
the user, presumably in the same way that HTTPS URLs with invalid certificates
are flagged. It was speculated that this is perhaps the first step toward
deprecating support for the protocol altogether, similar to how Firefox killed
support for Gopher quite some time ago.
After a bit of searching I found that this is by no means the unilateral move of
an arrogant tech giant thinking they can forcibly deprecate core internet
technology. Apparently the Debian project announced earlier that this year that
come November, all of their FTP servers will be shut down. Apparently this is
being presented as no big deal as the installation software has not offered the
ability to use FTP for some years.
While I suppose I can't, without hypocrisy, criticise Chrome too much on this
front because I *am* a long-standing crypto advocate and support the push to
use HTTPS for everything, for some reason the fact that nobody is using FTP
anymore came as a strong shock to me. The protocol is strongly associated in my
mind with Unix installation, and the fact that Debian - who I have always
thought of as being one of the most technologically conservative distros - have
abandoned it was a surprise. It's just one of those things that I always
thought would be around forever. And no doubt it *will* still be around in
various roles for some time yet to come, but it does seem conceivable that
before too long it will, like Gopher, be some weird specialist thing that you
have to use specific software for, rather than expecting it to work in your
browser.
