FTP had been superseded by a wide range of better protocols for a good 20 years now. It doesn't offer anything that hasn't already been reinvented and improved upon in other protocols. It's about time people stopped defending FTP and let it die. After all, we wouldn't be having the same conversation about recommending telnet or rsh instead of ssh. Or teletypes over HD monitors. I'm not somebody who advocates the latest technologies for the sake of being modern (eg I still rock IRC on Irssi) but sometimes there are quantifiable good reasons for switching away from older tech.
> FTP may look crufty today but it was an excellent protocol for its time, and offers capabilities you can't really get with any other current protocol.
This is some weird astroturfing of the FTP protocol's goodwill, but it was never particularly good. Even for its time it's a curiously conceited protocol that is remarkably complicated without doing very much that a similarly intelligent RMI-style interface couldn't have worked with.
And in practice, many FTP clients basically left the control channel concept behind and began to use it as if it were streamed RMI, opening up multiple connections for transfers to help users deal with even 1980's network environments.
It stands out as complicated for its time.
This is tangencial but I don't think gumpy's comment could be considered "astroturfing".
Really, the problem is that NAT is a terrible idea and screws up the idea of a fully end-to-end Internet.