Re: website & ftp downloads update

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

> On 22 Oct 2023, at 15:16, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:
> 
> Hi Marco,
> 
> Marco Cawthorne wrote:
>> I was wondering about the download links on the page. They still use
>> the ftp:// protocol which has regrettably been phased out by every
>> major browser.
> 
> well, ftp support is intentional, since it is traditional. Every major 
> browser... you mean every chrome-clone, since Chrome dropped support for it? 
> If Google is too ignorant to distinguish between a hyper-text (transfer 
> protocol) and a file... I don't know...
> But I guess it is evil that spreads like URL part and protocol hiding, https 
> enforcement for pages that don't need it at all, etc, etc.

I think ftp is (like telnet) being dropped in most places because of it's lack 
of security, and in general I'm in favour of the trend to always use encrypted 
communications.

What seems regrettable is that browsers have dropped ftp:// without 
implementing sftp:// as a replacement, though to be fair, support for large 
file download over https:// is normally fine nowadays.
So I guess there's no compelling need for sftp://