RE: SSH File Transfer Protocol - draft-moonesamy-secsh-filexfer-00

[S Moonesamy <sm+ietf%elandsys.com@localhost>]

At 05:50 12-07-2013, Rich Whalen wrote:
> The protocol is more of a file access protocol than a file transfer protocol.
> This re-introduction of Version 3 of the protocol has the problem of 
> not addressing the problem of exchanging text files on dissimilar 
> systems. Though OpenSSH is a very common implementation there are 
> other implementations on systems that use a line break mechanism 
> that is different from Unix/Linux.  Many commercial users of SFTP 
> implementations use it to transfer files between dissimilar systems 
> and often encounter problems with text files that use different line 
> break sequences. While the EXTENDED operation allows for vendor 
> specific extensions, the problem is that they are VENDOR specific, 
> and a company implementing a SFTP utility does not want to try to 
> determine which implementation of the protocol they are dealing with 
> and implement one of a variety of text file access methods.

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll comment below.

At 07:42 12-07-2013, denis bider (Bitvise) wrote:
> A fair number of implementations, including ours, implement SFTP 
> versions 4 and 6, as specified in:
>
> draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-13.txt
>
> as well as extensions specified in:
>
> draft-galb-filexfer-extensions-00.txt
>
> Just because one open source implementation chooses to be stuck in 
> the past - apparently because SFTP version 3 is simplistic, and 
> offered most of what is needed on their target platform - doesn't 
> mean it should get to dictate the standard.
>
> The latest SFTP version is 6. Restarting standardization at 3 
> doesn't mean implementations of 4 and 6 are going to go away. It in 
> fact means that two concurrent SFTP version trees are going to exist 
> in the future. I think this is a poor decision, and I do not support it.
>
> Any standardization efforts should continue where these documents left off:
>
> draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-13.txt
> draft-galb-filexfer-extensions-00.txt
>
> If OpenSSH chooses to be stuck in the past and implement an older 
> version of the protocol known as SFTP version 3, then the OpenSSH 
> project can document the version they implement, but based on one 
> implementation, that doesn't need to be an internet standard.

The draft is not about dictating any Internet standard.  I understand 
that there are a number of implementations that implement different 
versions of the expired drafts.  I am also aware of the file access 
protocol discussion and the discussion about vendor specific extensions.

As I mentioned previously my effort is about documentation what 
exists.  It is not about making implementations of 4 and 6 go away.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy