Subject: draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-00.txt & SFTP name

From: Darren Moffat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 16:01:26 -0800 (PST)

It has been brought to my attention today that there is already an
RFC from IETF that describes a protocol that goes by the short name
of SFTP (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0913.txt)

While draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-00.txt does not refer to the name of
the protocol as sftp it does use the subsystem name sftp which seems
to me like a bad thing since it could cause confusion with RFC 913.

This coupled with the fact that implementors will tend to choose sftp
as the command name because it is the name of the subsystem sets us
down a precendent that isn't good as far as names are concerned.
Add to the equation that the protocol described in the filexfer draft
is not actually like FTP I think the a more appropriate name for the
subsystem (and consequently the command names implementors are likely
to choose) would be appropriate.

--
Darren J Moffat

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From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 16:19:38 -0800 (PST)

It would tend to follow that if you chose to name things based on what
they do, that name collisions would be unavoidable.

> is not actually like FTP I think the a more appropriate name for the

sftp (rfc 913) is a lot like ftp except (simpler) although definently
not interoperable, suggesting that jon postel and mark lottor weren't
immune to name related confusion issues.

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