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

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