Re: Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service

[Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 05:05:07PM -0500, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
> 
> So, again, let's take a step back, noting that this gets back to
> my comments about a slippery slope between "drop FTP access" and
> "ban everything but HTTPS".   Am I in favor of making encrypted
> access to Internet resources available and having them work well
> from the user's standpoint as well as securely?  Absolutely.  Am
> I in favor of educating users as to why encryption is good for
> them and they should prefer it when they have the option?  Yes
> again, although I'm not sure that is the IETF's job.  But
> neither of those imply a stance that feels equivalent to "if you
> want to use unencrypted communications (or some particular
> protocol or resource), you are an outdated and/or immoral person
> whom we don't want in the IETF and who maybe doesn't deserve to
> be on the Internet"... especially if someone lives in a country
> or works for a company that is nervous about encrypted
> communications.   The Internet I've been working to build for
> well over 30 years is one that is open and flexible, not only to
> connectivity from all over the world, but to allowing people to
> work the way they want to rather than being victims of an "our
> way or you lose" approach.
> 
> That needs to apply to the IETF.   It is entirely reasonable for
> the IETF to adopt rules about how people work and interact with
> others and we have done a lot of that in recent years.  But, at
> least IMO, we need to remember that much of our strength and
> credibility depends on diversity --not just demographic
> diversity but on diversity of technical experience,
> perspectives, and work habits.  Each time we say "do it this way
> from now on or you might as well go away and leave the IETF to
> people who work and think the way we do", we need to assume that
> some people will say "ok, enough" and go away.  I can't predict
> how many of them will be valuable contributors, but "we" had
> best assume that some will be.   

I think this sentiment bears reiterating, so +1.
Thank you for putting it to words.

> [1]  The reasons are mostly unrelated to this discussion but are
> due to IESG refusal to enforce naming conventions:  When naming

Could you remind me of which deviations from
draft-(ietf|lastname)-wgname-slug are problematic for your workflow?  I
don't recall a particular IESG discussion on "let's not enforce naming
conventions" (and do recall some discussion about preserving some namespace
prefixes), but perhaps my memory needs a jolt to get in gear.

Thanks again,

Ben

> conventions are predictable, a decent interface to FTP that
> includes what is commonly called "mget" (really a combination of
> NLST, a client-end selection process, and RETR) works well and
> requires a minimum number of user steps.  When they are not, a
> search function like that of the datatracker gets much more
> easy.  So, to a certain extent, while I trust it was not
> intentional, where we are now might as well have been a sequence
> of "let's make FTP access less useful so it drives people off;
> then let's notice that people, having been driven off, are not
> using it any more; then we notice that it is getting little use
> so should discontinue it."
>