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Re:Deprecate FTP support (deprecated) by viraptor on Thursday October 15, 2020 @01:23AM (#24785182)
> FTP could be the already widely-supported solution to the send a file between two devices problem

It really couldn't. It has no discovery, no active identity validation story, issues with NAT traversal, relies on filesystem abstraction, ... In sending a file between two devices the actual file sending is the most trivial part and the only part that FTP can do (in the old and clunky let's-split-control-and-data way). We deserve better.

Re:Deprecate FTP support (deprecated) by Spivak on Thursday October 15, 2020 @11:30AM (#24789631)
HTTP also relies on a the filesystem abstraction, it doesn't stop web servers from presenting virtual versions.

The advantage that FTP has is ubiquitous and broad device support. FTP can provide the transport and authentication for a huge variety of devices and provide an instant user story of how to connect with older devices. Discovery and NAT traversal are external to the transport protocol anyway and would be just supporting _ftp._tcp records and the normal TURN/STUN servers.

Re:Deprecate FTP support (deprecated) by viraptor on Thursday October 15, 2020 @03:49PM (#24792983)
HTTP does not use filesystem abstraction. The path in HTTP requests is completely unrelated to files and just looks like a file path.

FTP has actual stateful filesystem traversal commands. PWD / CWD / CDUP / ... . Of course it can be faked, but why bother?

I understood devices in the comment as personal devices for end users rather than servers. In that case discovery is really not external. Same with NAT - it's a difference between "kind of works sometimes" and "is designed to work with it". See Skype's initial success. Or how SIP documents NAT behaviour extensively https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6314