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

[Joel Jaeggli <joelja%darkwing.uoregon.edu@localhost>]

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

On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Darren Moffat wrote:

> 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

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.

> subsystem (and consequently the command names implementors are likely
> to choose) would be appropriate.
>
> --
> Darren J Moffat
>

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