The point of suggesting HTTPS as the protocol is that users are more likely to be able to use it, and firewalls are less likely to cause problems with it. In any case the FSF sysadmins might eventually stop offering FTP, see the FTP service's MOTD:
230-NOTICE (Updated October 15 2021): 230- 230-If you maintain scripts used to access ftp.gnu.org over FTP, 230-we strongly encourage you to change them to use HTTPS instead. 230- 230-Eventually we hope to shut down FTP protocol access, but plan 230-to give notice here and other places for several months ahead 230-of time. But don't panic everyone, it doesn't seem like such a change is imminent. I think it was previously proposed in 2017 and there were quite a few objections. Supposing someone thinks this change isn't a good idea, we could always list both. James.
