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FTP Is 40 Years Old
An anonymous reader writes "FTP celebrates its 40th birthday tomorrow. Originally launched as the RFC 114 specification, which was published on 16 April 1971, FTP is arguably even more important today than when it was born. Frank Kenney, vice president of global strategy for US managed file transfer company Ipswitch, said that the protocol we know as FTP today is 'a far cry from when Abhay Bushan, a student at MIT, wrote the original specifications for FTP.' According to Kenney, the standard has grown from 'a simple protocol to copy files over a TCP-based network [to] a sophisticated, integrated model that provides control, visibility, compliance and security in a variety of environments, including the cloud.'"
Do we really need to bring buzzwords like the cloud into this? It's a file transfer protocol, aptly named, for transferring data to another system. It could be in a cloud or in a cave for all I care, as long as it has port 21 open.
Asking the vice president of global strategy of a company built around its FTP client to comment on the relevance of FTP is a bit like asking an Adobe marketing executive about the importance of Flash, no?
Lots of people grousing about how awful FTP is. I bet not one of you will ever write a piece of software that is still hugely popular and under active development 40 years later.
-- QED
Lots of people grousing about how awful FTP is. I bet not one of you will ever write a piece of software that is still hugely popular and under active development 40 years later.
Except, FTP isn't a piece of software. It's a Protocol. As far as I can tell from a cursory search, no particular FTP daemon is still in wide use that was written 40 years ago.