Hi All,
The recent 'ftp' related threads keep making me think of a (I believe) Doc Searls statement from Linux Journal, to the effect "It is immoral to teach new Linux users how to set up an ftp daemon/site." (Sorry, I'm too lazy to dig through back issues for the exact quote.) The idea, as I interpret it, is that everyone should use 'ssh' instead of ftp. (I claim that this is a common Mick Bauer theme in LJ too.) Question One: Do people agree with this? If tomorrow all instances of 'ftpd' were magically changed to 'sshd', would we have all the functionality we wanted, but with improved security? If so, the obvious and unavoidable obstacle to conversion is the gargantuan inertia from having *so* *many* ftp sites currently running. If so, I'm interested in this (bizarrely enough) because IMHO it would be a huge societal productivity gain to have *everyone* use 'ssh' and have 'ftp' go extinct. (We would place ftp on a pedestal of honor in the history books, of course.) Toward that end, in my head I've been playing with (hopefully) quick, easy, simple, low tech ideas/solutions, intended to reduce the time it takes for a general, societal, worldwide ftp-to-ssh conversion. Question Two: Am I just catching up with last Thursday? Are there already ideas/actions/discussions/efforts/people/projects working to assist this transition? (As mentioned above, the ideas are simple. However, explaining *why* I think these simple steps would help would make this post longer than I wish, so for now I omit the ideas.) Thanks, Tom -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
