Rob Sayre wrote:
As it happens, the curl documentation makes a good case for historic to me, or at least it frames the situation well no matter your opinion.
No, not at all.
https://ec.haxx.se/ftp/ "FTP, the File Transfer Protocol, is probably the oldest network protocol that curl supports—it was created in the early 1970s. The official spec that still is the go-to documentation is RFC 959, from 1985, published well over a decade before the first curl release.
It merely means FTP and its implementations are more stable and secure than newer protocols still being modified.
FTP was created in a different era of the Internet and computers and as such it works a little bit differently than most other protocols. These differences can often be ignored and things just works, but they are also important to know at times when things do not run as planned."
That is just misunderstanding at least for https://ec.haxx.se/ftp/twoconnections.htm When transferring a file from a sending FTP server to a receiving FTP server, we need an FTP controlling client, from which two controlling connection are created to the sending and the receiving servers. Then, the controlling client send commands to establish a data connection between the sending and the receiving servers and file transfer can begin. If the data connection is active for the sending server, the connection is passive for the receiving server and vice versa. That https does not support such transfer is because https can assume client side always act as receiving server, which is not a proper assumption for file transfer in general. Masataka Ohta
