Re: [Gnu-arch-users] sftp rename?

[Thomas Zander]

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On Thursday 25 December 2003 12:41, Miles Bader wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 25, 2003 at 10:04:35AM +0100, Thomas Zander wrote:
> > In KDE3.2 the exact same service has been added but they called it
> > differently; they called it 'fish'. I'm pretty sure they have a good
> > reason to call it that and if you want I can find out why.
> >
> > Point is that I think the sftp protocol naming in arch is confusing and I
> > think we should call it 'fish' instead.
>
> Many people _do_ know the `proper' meaning of sftp, and would be extremely
> confused if it was called `fish'.

Thats why I proposed to make the sftp one deprecated; I never suggested to 
remove it.
> In time I suppose you could educate 
> people to know what `fish' means, to the point where it wouldn't cause
> problems -- but you could do the same thing with `sftp', and it has a head
> start.
I'm not so sure about that; bad habits are hard to shake and the 'fish' 
protocol has a HUGE advantage; it comes with the standard KDE distribution 
which means at least 50% of the users will have it on his desktop.

> sftp also has the advantage that it actually makes some sense, so it's a
> lot easier to remember than a completely arbitrary string.

Ok, thats a strange way of saying you wish to know what fish standards for :)
- From the README:
  FISH is a protocol to get filesystem access without special server
  software, only using a remote shell. (Hence the name: FIles transferred
  over SHell protocol).

> [AFAIK, the other programs/protocols called `sftp' are very old and not
> really used anymore, so I don't think there's any active competition for
> the name, just the slow fading of years-old memories...]

The problem is that if you look up sftp you will find the /etc/services 
reference, that is never going to go away. sftp the old one will be supported 
by systems that like legacy stuff; like Solaris, SGI etc.
So the naming will be duplicate for a long long time to come.

The problem is very real; as we have seen a couple of times on this list. I 
have not heard any good reason why this problem will go away in a reasonable 
timeframe.
- -- 
Thomas Zander
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