FTP removal.. why would you do this? Is there a paid version that we can buy?
Hi.
Why would you remove FTP? It's not obsolete, I use it for work, and a good one third of my browsing is easily ftp sites such as NetBSD.org, ftp.gnu.org and others. FTP is still used heavily.
I really really dislike that it's gone. I'd gladly spend 30-40$ a year for a paid version.
I've been using you guys back to Mozilla, Firebird, Netscape and even earlier ..possibly related was NCSA Mosaic. C'mon guys.. which Millenial decided FTP was obsolete and uncool because it was old? It's how most of the Open Source projects and distributions still move data around. :~( This is the first time since I started using Netscape/Mozilla/etc that you've ever done something I don't like. The last thing I want to do is be forced to use Chrome or some other garbage. Please.. bring it back or some sort of external module we can pay for to get browsing back. Please! I beg you. (Trying hard to be really civil and nice here ..truely baffled that it'd be removed).
A.
All Replies (10)
vk2fvax said
Hi. Why would you remove FTP? It's not obsolete, I use it for work, and a good one third of my browsing is easily ftp sites such as NetBSD.org, ftp.gnu.org and others. FTP is still used heavily.
Those two are HTTPS sites, not FTP. It doesn't go away.
For working with FTP it's better to have a dedicated FTP client, or you can buy Total Commander, or download any other 2-pane file manager.
Modified by TyDraniu
From the Firefox 88 release notes: FTP support has been disabled, and its full removal is planned for an upcoming release. Addressing this security risk reduces the likelihood of an attack while also removing support for a non-encrypted protocol.
Here is some more information from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Experimental_features#security_and_privacy
For security reasons, FTP is disabled from Firefox 88 in all releases (bug 1691890), with the intention of removing the feature in Firefox 90 (previously FTP was only disabled in nightly builds). The network.ftp.enabled preference must be enabled (set to true) to allow FTP to be used.
Yes they are https sites. Well spotted. I was trying to show alternate content for just that example. Normally you goto ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/ .. but we can't view it any longer. Sadly, most ftp sites don't have a http or https equivalent (!). If you've ever worked a support role, you'd realise how MUCH this feature is used in a browser for anonymous ftp browsing. There's a lot of people on IRC asking "why" ?
What's the actual bug description ? I'm struggling to find it. I can see obscure lingo of "let the feature ride the trains" and I don't understand.
Still baffling why someone would do this.
It's great that set the variable Alice... (thank you for that).. but after 90.x it'll not be there also.
So? Do we stockpile versions of the browser prior to 90? I just don't know what to do. This is a feature I use extremely heavily. I'm sure there's other people. Still trying to get my head around what the security bug is for browsing anonymous ftp mirrors.
Thanks for you time.. still baffled.
vk2fvax said
It's great that set the variable
Am I right assuming that you are talking about changing the value of that preference on the about:config page ? If not: it's described and shows an image of how to do it in the ghacks article I gave you a link to.
vk2fvax said
What's the actual bug description ? I'm struggling to find it. I can see obscure lingo of "let the feature ride the trains" and I don't understand.
Some background for the decision to remove FTP support in Firefox is in this bug: Bug 1574475 (kill-ftp) Opened 2019-08-16 09:24 EDT Closed 2021-04-29 05:37 EDT Remove FTP support Status: RESOLVED FIXED Milestone: 90 Branch
FTP browsing is a feature I and a lot of others use extremely heavily. Yes it's not secure, someone could perform a man in the middle attack, but there's still crypto sigs and checksums for distribution media and files. It's something that's extremely useful and easily a third of my firefox use for more than twenty years. I'm truly surprised someone would want to remove it in 90.. Please don't. It works fine.
With SSL, you have no choice. If you're using port 443/81 then you get SSL. If you use 80 and it redirects you to 443/81 then your ..again using SSL. FTP generally doesn't have this, though a few projects such as VSFTPd have tacked TLS onto it and the connection can request this if available in the client (rather similar idea to the KEX negotiation). Just because it's potentially insecure ..yet still used by a lot of people (from what I'm also seeing in the outrage on IRC), please don't remove this feature. :~(
The people who answer questions here, for the most part, are other users volunteering their time (like me), not Mozilla employees or Firefox developers. The feedback process mentioned in the Firefox 88 release notes is currently on hold but you can use the Firefox Development forum at Mozilla Discourse to leave feedback for Firefox developers.
You can also look though this Firefox discussion thread at Reddit, to see if anything there is helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/mzzwns/dont_remove_ftp_support_from_firefox/
In addition to the above: maybe you'd like to take a look at these search results .....