Vendor comments on plan to remove telnet, ftp and eventually appl/bsd

[Darren Reed (Optimation)]

From: "Sam Hartman" <hartmans at mit.edu>
> >>>>> "Darren" == Darren Reed (Optimation) <darrenr at optimation.com.au>
writes:
[...]
>     Darren> So far as rlogin/rcp/rsh go, a basic requirement would be
>     Darren> that the command line syntax does not change.  We have *a
>     Darren> lot of* scripts, documents, etc, which explicitly use
>     Darren> encrypted sessions.
>
> OK.  I don't know whether we plan on meeting this requirement; I
> rather suspect not.  We'll try to keep command line compatibility for
> ftp and telnet, but our assumption is that no one actually wants to
> maintain a Kerberos bsd application set for us to recommend and that
> we'll be dropping that technology as soon as there is a viable
> alternative.
>
> Of course the advantage of open-source software is that the community
> can write software to fill voids and distribute this software.  If
> someone contributed migration scripts we'd certainly consider taking
> them and if we decided against they could be maintained by their
> author as a package for the community to use.

So where do  you see the MIT Kerberos distribution going then ?
Just becoming a set of libraries and core utilities (kinit/kdestroy) ?

It would be nice if there were some standard client utilities bundled
with the MIT Kerberos, making it, as a package, instantly useful,
once built and installed.

I understand your dilemma with respect to telnet (and its constantly
evolving protocol), but I do not see the same problem with the BSD
r* programs and would encourage you to consider not dumping them.

Cheers,
Darren