At 01:31 PM 4/3/2015, IETF Administrative Director wrote:
All;
The Technology Management Committee of the IAOC is considering
recommending to the IAOC ending support for FTP to retrieve files
from the IETF servers and would like to hear from the community
before the IAOC taking its decision. This does not include
rfc-editor.org.
The use of FTP to retrieve files from the IETF servers has been
declining steadily.
The files made available with that protocol are also available using
http and rsync. (See the modules exposed at rsync.ietf.org using
"rsync rsync.ietf.org::")
The majority of the current FTP traffic appears to be from mirror
sites that would be better served using rsync.
Input received by 20 April will inform the decision.
I still use FTP occasionally for third party transfers (e.g. between two remote
machines while controlling the transfer from a third). I don't use FTP for RFC
retrieval like that, but there may be others who do as that functionality isn't
in HTTP or RSYNC.
There are also a few programs that use FTP to emulate a file system so you can
do drags and drops. Users may not even realize that its FTP under the hood.
That said - I don't have an objection to removing FTP from the list of
retrieval methods.
But I don't think we should do it as Stephen suggests and just turn it off.
Comes under the heading of "conservative in what you send". Announce it and
take a while to see if folks start moving off or object strenuously.
Mike
Thanks
Ray