On the apparently looming death of FTP

About a week ago I noticed somebody mention on a mailing list I'm subscribed to

that Google's Chrome browser is soon to start flagging FTP URLs as insecure to

the user, presumably in the same way that HTTPS URLs with invalid certificates

are flagged. It was speculated that this is perhaps the first step toward

deprecating support for the protocol altogether, similar to how Firefox killed

support for Gopher quite some time ago.

After a bit of searching I found that this is by no means the unilateral move of

an arrogant tech giant thinking they can forcibly deprecate core internet

technology. Apparently the Debian project announced earlier that this year that

come November, all of their FTP servers will be shut down. Apparently this is

being presented as no big deal as the installation software has not offered the

ability to use FTP for some years.

While I suppose I can't, without hypocrisy, criticise Chrome too much on this

front because I am a long-standing crypto advocate and support the push to

use HTTPS for everything, for some reason the fact that nobody is using FTP

anymore came as a strong shock to me. The protocol is strongly associated in my

mind with Unix installation, and the fact that Debian - who I have always

thought of as being one of the most technologically conservative distros - have

abandoned it was a surprise. It's just one of those things that I always

thought would be around forever. And no doubt it will still be around in

various roles for some time yet to come, but it does seem conceivable that

before too long it will, like Gopher, be some weird specialist thing that you

have to use specific software for, rather than expecting it to work in your

browser.

Nothing online lasts forever, I guess.