IMO, the IETF should support as many protocols as possible. The IETF
site represents the Internet to the world, and just as the IETF itself
"let's a thousand flowers bloom", our site should support as many
protocols as are economically available.
I certainly appreciate the desire to do all of the following:
- omit deprecated protocols
(e.g., NETBLT)
- avoid security vulnerabilities
(e.g., RCP)
- encourage efficient protocols
(e.g., RSYNC for bulk coordination)
- encourage best-practices
(e.g., privacy preservation)
Only the first two of these involves disabling services. All other
"behavior engineering" should be accomplished through education (e.g.,
informational web pages explaining the pros and cons of different methods).
However, we should always try to support as many access methods as
economically possible and I see no good reason to disable this service
at this time.
Joe
On 4/3/2015 10:31 AM, 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.
Thanks
Ray