[ih] FTP RIP

[Darius Kazemi]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 2:15 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> And while Abhay was the editor, it was a committee effort.
>

The only claim in the article about Bhushan is that in 1971 he "first
developed the File Transfer Protocol". Whether this is correct or not
really depends on if you consider RFC 114 or 172 to be the first version of
FTP. 114 seems to be pretty clearly a solo effort by Bhushan. It's written
in the first person, for one. Worth noting that he refers to it as "a file
transfer protocol" rather than "the File Transfer Protocol". He does note
that he had help with implementation but it seems like the actual concept
for 114 is his. I'd be interested to know if that was not the case.

Nine weeks later, RFC 172 comes out as a committee effort and is what I'd
consider the first *normative* spec for FTP. RFC 172 does more or less
throw out or rework into oblivion what was proposed in 114 (in fact it gets
split across two protocols, DTP in 171, and FTP in 172).

I'd argue that despite the technical differences, RFC 114 is the first
version of FTP, for three reasons: (1) lineage of Bhushan chairing the
committee for the 172 version, (2) first use of the term "file transfer
protocol" in the RFC series, and most importantly to me, (3) the
theoretical framework of direct vs indirect network resource usage laid out
in the introduction to 114. The indirect usage proposition is for me is the
critical thing that makes FTP (of any version) different from the protocols
that came earlier in the RFC series, which were largely variations on
"using this protocol is like logging in to this computer from another site
and you should read the manual for the specific computer because otherwise
you will be lost".

-Darius