[HN Gopher] WebDAV isn't dead yet
___________________________________________________________________
WebDAV isn't dead yet
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 225 points
Date : 2025-10-24 19:09 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.feld.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.feld.me)
| rubatuga wrote:
| No random writes is the nail in the coffin for me
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It's HTTP, of course there's an extension for that?
|
| Sabre-DAV's implementation seems to be relatively well
| implemented. It's supported in webdavfs for example. Here's
| some example headers one might attach to a PATCH request:
| X-Update-Range: append X-Update-Range: bytes=3-6
| X-Update-Range: bytes=4- X-Update-Range: bytes=-2
|
| https://sabre.io/dav/http-patch/
| https://github.com/miquels/webdavfsl
|
| Another example is this expired draft. I don't love it, but it
| uses PATCH+Content-Range. There's some other neat ideas in
| here, and shows the versatility & open possibility (even if I
| don't love re-using this header this way).
| https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-wright-http-patch-byte...
|
| Apache has has a PUT with Content-Range,
| https://github.com/miquels/webdav-handler-rs/blob/master/doc...
|
| Great write-up in rclone on trying to support partial updates,
| https://forum.rclone.org/t/support-putstream-for-webdav-serv...
|
| It would be great to see a proper extension formalized here!
| But there are options.
| sublinear wrote:
| This blog post didn't convince me. I must assume the default for
| most web devs in 2025 is hosting on a Linux VM and/or mounting
| the static files into a Docker container. SFTP is already there
| and Apache is too.
|
| The last time I had to deal with WebDAV was for a crusty old CMS
| nobody liked using many years ago. The support on dev machines
| running Windows and Mac was a bit sketchy and would randomly have
| files skipped during bulk uploads. Linux support was a little
| better with davfs2, but then VSCode would sometimes refuse to
| recognize the mount without restarting.
|
| None of that workflow made sense. It was hard to know what
| version of a file was uploaded and doing any manual file
| management just seemed silly. The project later moved to GitLab.
| A CI job now simply SFTPs files upon merge into the main branch.
| This is a much more familiar workflow to most web devs today and
| there's no weird jank.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Copyparty has webdav and smb support (among others), which makes
| it a good candidate to combine with a Kodi client perhaps?
| Tractor8626 wrote:
| If you need sftp independent of unix auth - there is sftpgo.
|
| Sftpgo also supports webdav, but for use cases in the article
| sftp is just better.
| sylens wrote:
| Author seems to conflate S3 API with S3 itself. Most vendors are
| now including S3 API compatibility into their product because
| people are so used to using that as a model
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| More like attempt at S3 API compatibility...
| dangus wrote:
| I was about to make a very similar comment.
|
| There really is nothing wrong with the S3 API and the
| complaints about Minio and S3 are basically irrelevant. It's an
| API that dozens of solutions implement.
| notpushkin wrote:
| They do mention S3-compatible servers later in the post. It
| really seems to be about protocol itself.
| cricalix wrote:
| "FTP is dead" - shared web hosting would like a word. Quite a few
| web hosts still talk about using FTP to upload websites to the
| hosting server. Yes, these days you can upload SSH keys and
| possibly use SFTP, but the docs still talk about tools like
| FileZilla and basic FTP.
|
| Exhibit A: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-ie-web-hosting-ftp-
| storage-...
| jasongill wrote:
| Shared hosting is dying, but not yet dead; FTP is dying with it
| - it's really the last big use case for FTP now that software
| distribution and academia have moved away from FTP. As shared
| hosting continues to decline in popularity, FTP is going along
| with it.
|
| Like you, I will miss the glory days of FTP :'(
| theshackleford wrote:
| Shared hosting is in decline in much the same way as it was
| in 2015. Aka everyone involved is still making money hand
| over fist despite continued reports of its death right around
| the corner.
| jasongill wrote:
| No, not at all the case. There has been continued
| consolidation of the shared hosting space, plus consumer
| interest in "a website" has declined sharply now that small
| businesses just feel that they need an instagram to get
| started. Combine that with site builders eating at shared
| hosting's market share, and it's not looking good for the
| future of the "old school" shared hosting industry that you
| are thinking of.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Seems short sighted, a lot of older people and privacy
| conscious people of all ages avoid social media. But I
| guess if they are sustaining a business on only
| Instagram, good for them.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > There has been continued consolidation of the shared
| hosting space
|
| That's been happening, at least from my own memory, since
| _at least_ the mid-2000s.
|
| > plus consumer interest in "a website" has declined
| sharply now that small businesses just feel that they
| need an instagram to get started.
|
| Ah yes, the 2020s version of "just start a Facebook
| page." The more things change, the more they stay the
| same I suppose.
|
| > Combine that with site builders eating at shared
| hosting's market share
|
| I remember hearing that for the first time in I wanna
| say...2006? It sure did cause a panic for at least a
| little while.
|
| > and it's not looking good for the future of the "old
| school" shared hosting industry that you are thinking of.
|
| Yes, I've heard this one more times than I can count too.
|
| The funny thing is, I've been hearing this same "shared
| hosting is dying" narrative for nearly two decades now.
| Yet, in that time, I've seen multiple companies launch,
| thrive, and sell for multi-million dollar exits.
|
| But sure, this time it's definitely the death knell.
| Meanwhile, I assure you, the bigger players in the space
| are still making money hand over fist.
|
| https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/web-
| host...
|
| > By hosting type, shared hosting led with 37.5% of the
| web hosting market share in 2024
| jasongill wrote:
| I was in the space from the late 90's, acquired ~30
| brands and was the largest private consolidator of shared
| hosting, and sold to a Fortune 500 in 2015. Sounds like
| you had a similar experience as mine. There's no way you
| can deny that the glory days of shared hosting are over -
| while there is still a little money to be made by setting
| up a VPS with cPanel, and money to be made if you are
| WebPros or Newfold, the market is contracting and has
| been for years due to the factors I listed. The Cheval
| list used to be the hottest marketplace on the planet and
| now is just a shell of it's former self, unfortunately.
| tredre3 wrote:
| The number of shared hosting providers has drastically
| declined since the 2000s. I would posit that things like
| squarespace/hosted wordpress took the lion share, with the
| advent of $5-10 VPS filling the remaining niches.
|
| The remaining hosting companies certainly still make a lot
| of money, a shared hosting business is basically on
| autopilot once set up (I used to own one, hence why I still
| track the market) and they can be overcommitted like crazy.
| immibis wrote:
| Source on the number of providers declining?
| theshackleford wrote:
| > The number of shared hosting providers has drastically
| declined since the 2000s
|
| Yeah, there's definitely been some wild consolidation.
| I've actually been involved in quite a few acquisitions
| myself over the last decade in one form or another.
|
| > (I used to own one, hence why I still track the market)
|
| I'm still in the industry, though in a very different
| segment now. I do still keep a small handful of legacy
| customers, folks I've known for years, on shared setups,
| but it's more of a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch
| yours" kind of thing now. It's not really a profit play,
| more a mix of nostalgia and habit.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think the true death of ftp was amazon s3 deciding to use
| their own protocol instead of ftp, as s3 is basically the
| same niche.
| HumanOstrich wrote:
| FTP does not even come close to supporting the use cases of
| S3, especially now.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yeah, but the average s3 user doesnt care about most of
| those most of the time.
|
| Just like how there are usecases ftp supports that s3
| doesn't.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I haven't used old school FTP in probably 15 years. Surely
| we're not talking about using that unencrypted protocol in
| 2025?
|
| From that link: 2. SSH connection
| You will need advanced knowledge and an OVHcloud web hosting
| plan Pro or Performance to use this access type.
|
| Well, maybe we are. I'd cross that provider off my list right
| there.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| FTP still works great and encryption is a non-priority for
| 100% of users.
| SXX wrote:
| It should be priority for hosting companies though since
| leaked credentials and websites hosting malware is a
| problem.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Shared hosting companies are still exposing cPanel/WHMCS
| to the outside world. You don't need FTP passwords to pwn
| this kind of crap.
| creatonez wrote:
| Transport encryption should be a huge priority for
| everyone. It's completely unacceptable to continue using
| unencrypted protocols over the public internet.
|
| _Especially_ for the use case of transferring files to and
| from the backend of a web host. Not using it in that
| scenario is freely handing over control over your backend
| to everything in between you and the host, putting everyone
| at risk in the process.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > It's completely unacceptable to continue using
| unencrypted protocols over the public internet.
|
| That is nonsense. The reality is that most data simply
| _is not sensitive_ , and there is no valid reason to
| encrypt it. I wouldn't use insecure FTP because
| credentials, but there's no good reason to encrypt your
| blog or something.
| lavela wrote:
| I'd argue that most people like knowing that what they
| receive is what the original server sent(and vice versa)
| but maybe you enjoy ads enough to prefer having your ISP
| put more of it on the websites you use?
|
| Jokes aside https is as much about privacy as is is about
| reducing the chance you receive data that has been
| tampered. You shouldn't only not use FTP because
| credentials but also because embedded malware you didn't
| put there yourself.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agree but also wonder if ISPs bother with this anymore,
| now that almost all websites are https.
| rixed wrote:
| I, for one, would like to see an ISP dedicated enough and
| tecnically able to inject ads in my FTP stream. :)
| immibis wrote:
| Didn't we already go through this 10 years ago and then
| Firesheep got created and thoroughly debunked it?
| homarp wrote:
| firesheep was built to demonstrate how Easy HTTP session
| hijacking was (was a Firefox extension)
|
| on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1827928
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| You're missing the opposite issue - people might not care
| about your data, but you might well care if their data
| (e.g. porn sites) was uploaded to your blog.
|
| It's not so much about the data, but protecting your
| credentials for the server.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Not true. Your hosting provider already has physical
| access to the computer you're connecting to.
|
| Whether or not the connection you're using is encrypted
| doesn't really matter because the ISP and hosting
| provider are legally obligated to prevent unauthorized
| access.
|
| (It's different if you're the NSA or some other state-
| level actor, but you're not.)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I've used FTP for static sites for decades by this point.
| Credentials have never been leaked, transfers have never
| been interfered with.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| How would you know if the transfers were interfered with?
| Do you take checksums of the files you upload and then
| check that the files apparently uploaded are the same?
|
| Also, how do you know that there isn't someone performing
| a MITM (man in the middle) attack? FTP has no mechanism
| that I know of to verify that you're connecting to the
| server that you think you are.
|
| It may well be that you're not a sizeable target and that
| no-one is interested in hacking your site, but that's
| just luck and not an endorsement of unencrypted FTP.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| How would you know that your neighbours aren't secretly
| spying together on you and interfering with your life in
| ways you don't notice?
|
| We have to put a limit to paranoia. If things work
| correctly for decades and there are no signs of foul play
| after endless real world usage, it's safe to say nobody
| is hacking our FTP.
|
| It's different if you're a bank or the KGB or the CIA.
|
| > It may well be that you're not a sizeable target and
| that no-one is interested in hacking your site, but
| that's just luck and not an endorsement of unencrypted
| FTP.
|
| Do you drive an armored car?
| sltkr wrote:
| They mention that the "FTP" service includes SFTP, which is
| file transfer over SSH (not actually related to classic FTP),
| which is perfectly secure and supported by most FTP clients
| like Filezilla.
|
| The premium "SSH connection" you mentioned seems to refer to
| shell access via SSH, which is a separate thing.
| cricalix wrote:
| They also support FTP without the SSH transport, and it's
| not FTPS either. Various IP cameras still support FTP as a
| way to write files out periodically; I use this to provide
| a "stream" from a camera (8 seconds per frame because
| reasons) to the world. Actual streaming via RTSP is also
| available, but I could never get a stable stream to a video
| host (like YT or Twitch) from the camera (partially because
| of a poor quality network connection that can't be upgraded
| easily). So, FTP + credentials -> walled off directory
| that's not under the web root -> PHP script in web root ->
| web browser.
| mastax wrote:
| Relatedly, is there a good way to expose a directory of files via
| the S3 API? I could only find alpha quality things like rclone
| serve s3 and things like garage which have their own on disk
| format rather than regular files.
| elitepleb wrote:
| consider versitygw or s3proxy
| williamjackson wrote:
| I was surprised, then not really surprised, when I found out this
| week that Tailscale's native file sharing feature, Taildrive, is
| implemented as a WebDAV server in the network.
|
| https://tailscale.com/kb/1369/taildrive
| nine_k wrote:
| What else would you expect, just out of curiosity? SMB? NFS?
| SSHFS?
| worik wrote:
| A proprietary binary patented protocol...
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| and do what, implement virtual filesystem driver for every
| OS ?
| HumanOstrich wrote:
| Only if adding that complexity locks in more subscribers
| for premium features and support.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I built a simple WebDAV server with Sabre to sync Devonthink
| databases. WebDAV was the only option that synced between users
| of multiple iCloud accounts, worked anywhere in the world and
| didn't require a Dropbox subscription. It's a faster sync than
| CloudKit. I don't have other WebDAV use cases but I expect this
| one to run without much maintenance or cost for years. Useful
| protocol.
| walterbell wrote:
| iOS DevonThink sync WebDAV has been reliable, fast, maintained,
| non-subscription and includes a web scraper. Good for saving
| LLM chatbot markdown.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I use webdav for serving media over tailscale to infuse when I'm
| on the move. SMB did not play nicely at all and nfs is not
| supported..
|
| The go stdlib has quite a good one that just works with only a
| small bit of wrapping in a main() etc.
|
| Although ive since written one in elixir that seems to handle my
| traffic better..
|
| (you can also mount them on macos and browse with finder / shell
| etc which is pretty nice)
| moritz wrote:
| dou you happen to have the source code open somewhere? i was
| just looking into webdav via elixir
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It's just a single file really, it's super rough I should get
| around to cleaning it up sometime. Only supports reading.
|
| https://pastebin.com/nUVm9tnf
| netsharc wrote:
| One interesting use of WebDAV is SysInternals (which is a
| collection of tools for Windows), it's accessible from Windows
| Explorer via WebDAV by going to \\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools
| gruez wrote:
| Isn't that SMB, not webdav?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| IIRC, Windows for a while had native WebDAV support in
| Explorer, but setting it up was very non-obvious. Not sure if
| it still does, since I've moved fully to Linux.
| netsharc wrote:
| I guess the "\\\$HOSTNAME\$DIR" URL syntax in Windows
| Explorer also works for WebDAV. Is it safe to have SMB over
| WAN?
|
| I just tried https://live.sysinternals.com/Tools in Windows
| Explorer, and it also lists the files, identical to how it
| would show the contents of any directory.
|
| Even running "dir \\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools", or
| starting a program from the command prompt like
| "\\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools\tcpview64" works.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| "\\\server\share" is called a UNC path, which can be served
| by SMB, WebDAV or another type of server.
|
| (old ref, but the architecture hasn't changed AFAIK)
|
| Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-
| versions/windows/...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I wonder how much better WebDAV must have gotten with newer
| versions of the HTTP stack. I only used it briefly in HTTP mode
| but found the clients to all be rather slow, barely using tricks
| like pipelining to make requests go a little faster.
|
| It's a shame the protocol never found much use in commercial
| services. There would be little need for official clients running
| in compatibity layers like you see with tools like Gqdrive and
| OneDrive on Linux. Frankly, except for the lack of standardised
| random writes, the protocol is still one of the better solutions
| in this space.
|
| I have no idea how S3 managed to win as the "standard" API for so
| many file storage solutions. WebDAV has always been right there.
| mid1221213 wrote:
| On the same topic, and because I believe too that WebDAV is not
| dead, far from it, I published a WIP lastly, part of a broader
| project, that is an nginx module that does WebDAV file server and
| is compatible with NextCloud sync clients, desktop & Android. It
| can be used with Gnome Online Accounts too, as well as with
| Nautilus (and probably others), as a WebDAV server.
|
| Have a look there: https://codeberg.org/lunae/dav-next
|
| /!\ it's a WIP, thus not packaged anywhere yet, no binary
| release, etc... but all feedback welcome
| apitman wrote:
| If you have to call out compatibility with specific clients
| doesn't that indicate pretty serious issues with the spec?
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm using WebDAV to sync files from my phone to my NAS. There
| weren't any good alternatives, really. SMB is a non-starter on
| the public Internet (SMB-over-QUIC might change that eventually),
| SFTP is even crustier, rsync requires SSH to work.
|
| What else?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| Syncthing is pretty nice for that sort of thing.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Syncthing is great but it does file sync, not file sharing,
| so not ideal when you say want to share a big media library
| with your laptop but not necessarily load everything on it
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| That moves the goalpost. The user I was replying to wanted
| sync and didn't seem to be using other functionality like
| that.
| cyberax wrote:
| I have just tried to run their unofficial apps, but I
| couldn't make them work.
| sunaookami wrote:
| Recently set up WebDAV for my Paperless-NGX instance so my
| scanner can directly upload scans to Paperless. I wish Caddy
| would support WebDAV out of the box, had to use this extension:
| https://github.com/mholt/caddy-webdav
| xattt wrote:
| Which scanner, if you don't mind me asking? I've got a decade+
| old ix500 that had cloud support but not local SMB.
| sunaookami wrote:
| EPSON WorkForce ES-580W. Got it from eBay with "damaged
| packaging" (not really) from Epson Outlet Store in my
| country. With a discount code I only paid 324 EUR. There is
| also an official promotion by Epson (in Europe only maybe?)
| where you get 75 EUR cashback for this scanner, so
| effectively 249 EUR which is a VERY good price. Also supports
| SMB but I'm running Paperless on my VPS, hence I used WebDAV
| (if you do this: the scanner will do a GET request to the
| WebDAV url first which must be answered with a 200 OK or it
| will never try WebDAV).
|
| I debated between this scanner and the Brother ADS-1800W but
| the Brother has a slow UI and no thingy where the paper lands
| when it's done scanning (not sure how it's called in
| English).
| xattt wrote:
| Thank you!
| warabe wrote:
| Just like the author, I use WebDAV for Joplin, also Zotero. Just
| love them so much.
|
| We need to keep using open protocols such as WebDAV instead of
| depending on proprietary APIs like the S3 API.
| ctippett wrote:
| > In fact, you're already using WebDAV and you just don't realize
| it.
|
| Tailscale's drive share feature is implemented as a WebDAV share
| (connect to http://100.100.100.100:8080). You can also connect to
| Fastmail's file storage over WebDAV.
|
| WebDAV is neat.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I use it all the time to mount my CopyParty instance. Works
| great!
| geek_at wrote:
| Copy party is really great. Using it to share files with my
| clients as well as for my remote media gallery
| nickcw wrote:
| I wrote both the WebDAV client (backend) for rclone and the
| WebDAV server. This means you can sync to and from WebDAV servers
| or mount them just fine. You can also expose your filesystem as a
| WebDAV server (or your S3 bucket or Google Drive etc).
|
| The RFCs for WebDAV are better than those for FTP but there is
| still an awful lot of not fully specified stuff which servers and
| clients choose to do differently which leads to lots of
| workarounds.
|
| The protocol doesn't let you set modification times by default
| which is important for a sync tool, but popular implementations
| like owncloud and nextcloud do. Likewise with hashes.
|
| However the protocol is very fast, much faster than SFTP with
| it's homebrew packetisation as it's based on well optimised web
| tech, HTTP, TLS etc.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder how you would compare it to nfs (which I believe can
| be TCP based, and probably encrypted)
|
| Not that it is a good comparison. NFS isn't super popular,
| macos can do it, I don't think windows can. But both windows
| and macos can do webdav.
| devttyeu wrote:
| NFS is much slower, maybe unless you deploy it which RDMA. I
| believe even 4.2 doesn't really support asynchronous calls or
| has some significant limitations around them - I've commonly
| seen a single large write of a few gigs starve all other
| operations including lstat for minutes.
|
| Also it's borderline impossible to tune nfs to go above
| 30gbps or so consistently, with WebDAV it's a matter of
| adding a bunch more streams and you're past 200gbps pretty
| easily.
| Saris wrote:
| My experience with NFS is its not very fast, compared to SMB
| or WebDAV
| apitman wrote:
| Thank you for rclone.
|
| In your opinion, is WebDAV good enough to be the protocol for
| exposing file systems over HTTP, or is there room for something
| better? I was bullish on Solid but they don't seem to be making
| much progress.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| > FTP is dead (yay),
|
| Hahahaha, haha, ha, no. And probably (still)more used than WebDAV
|
| pls send help
| spragl wrote:
| Yeah, that must have been wishful thinking.
|
| FTP is such a clunky protocol, it is peculiar it has had such
| staying power.
| Velocifyer wrote:
| JMAP will eventually replace WebDAV.
| ezst wrote:
| That's some wishful thinking. I understand the case for JMAP
| above IMAP, I understand how "it makes sense" to NIH the rest
| of cal/cardDAV, I'm not sure what the sales pitch for file
| transfer is, though, especially when the ecosystem is pretty
| much inexistant.
| throwaway87502 wrote:
| > While writing this article I came across an interesting project
| under development, Altmount. This would allow you to "mount"
| published content on Usenet and access it directly without
| downloading it... super interesting considering I can get multi-
| gigabit access to Usenet pretty easily.
|
| There is also NzbDav for this too, https://github.com/nzbdav-
| dev/nzbdav
| panny wrote:
| >It's broadly available as you can see
|
| And yet, I can never seem to find a decent java lib for
| webdav/caldav/carddav. Every time I look for one, I end up
| wanting to write my own instead. Then it just seems like the
| juice isn't worth the squeeze.
| citruspi wrote:
| OmniFocus also supports WebDAV for folks that prefer to self-host
| - https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnifocus/univer...
| walterbell wrote:
| Kudos to Omni Group for supporting open-standard on-prem sync.
| ycui1986 wrote:
| The Windows built-in WebDAV in explorer embarrassingly slow.
| Pretty much unusable for anything serious.
| nine_k wrote:
| OTOH gio-based WebDAV access built into Nautilus and Thunar is
| something I use daily, and it works quite fine, for a FUSE-
| based filesystem.
|
| Unlike NFS or SMB, WebDAV mounts do not get stuck for a minute
| when the connection becomes unstable.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| For sure. I tried to setup a collaboration environment for a
| Customer years ago using WebDAV over SSL in lieu of Dropbox.
| Everything worked great (authenticating to Active Directory,
| NTFS ACLs, IP address restrictions in IIS policy where
| necessary, auditing access in Windows security log and IIS
| logs, no client to install), but the Windows client experience
| was hideously slow. People hated it for that and it got no
| traction.
| Tepix wrote:
| In my experience, WebDAV has always been slow, no matter which
| platform.
|
| Can WebDAV be made fast?
| latchkey wrote:
| It has been 16 years since I started this webdav client for Java:
|
| https://github.com/lookfirst/sardine
|
| Still going.
| elric wrote:
| Sardine is great. I recently used it to automate some backups
| from a webdav share. No complaints whatsoever :-)
| latchkey wrote:
| Thanks! API design is a bit out of date, but at least it
| still works.
| aborsy wrote:
| A lot of apps support WebDAV. It seems to be better supported
| than SFTP?
|
| You can run a WebDAV server using caddy easily.
| adriatp wrote:
| I feel the pain when you refeer to MinIO. I ended up using a pre
| 15 version in order to have all previous features but that sucks.
| I will try this.
| tealpod wrote:
| FTP is not dead. A huge percent of Wind Turbines use FTP for data
| transfer.
| warpspin wrote:
| > Lots of tools support it: [...| Windows Explorer (Map Network
| Drive, Connect to a Web site...)
|
| Not sure he ever tried supporting that. We once did and it was a
| nightmare. People couldn't handle it at all even with
| screenshotted manuals.
|
| My personal experience says that even the dumbest user is able to
| use FileZilla successfully, and therefore SFTP, while people just
| don't get the built-in WebDAV support of the OSes.
|
| I also vaguely recall that WebDAV in Windows had quite a bit of
| randomly appearing problems and performance issues. But this was
| all a while ago, might have improved since then.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| if operating systems had just put a bit more time into the
| clients and not stopped any work in 2010 or so, webdav could have
| been much more, covering many usecases of fuse. unfortunately
| especially the mac webdav and finders outdated architecture make
| this just too painful
| dabinat wrote:
| I feel like WebDAV will have staying power for a simple reason:
| it's easy to understand and implement. My company has a cloud
| platform for people to share files and I am working on a feature
| to allow it to work as a drive through WebDAV. We may support
| other protocols later on but WebDAV made the most sense to start
| off with because we already have all the infrastructure we need
| to deliver files over HTTP. The amount of additional complexity
| to support WebDAV was near-zero and the amount to support other
| protocols would be a lot more.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Fully agree, it's boring technology (tm) and that's usually the
| way to go (instead of relying on the next big thing), also it's
| an open standard.
| rapnie wrote:
| > I should have titled this post "I hate S3".
|
| Use it where it makes sense. And S3 does not necessarily equate
| to using Amazon. I like the Garage S3 project that is interesting
| for smaller scale uses and self-hosted systems. The project is
| funded with EU Horizon grants via NLnet.
|
| https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/
| donatj wrote:
| I should write a related article "I hate that the AWS S3 SDK
| has become a defacto web protocol"
| OJFord wrote:
| You hate that there is a standard, or aspects of this one?
| (Or that it's a _de facto_ standard, not clearly specified
| for example what 's required and what just happens to be in
| AWS' implementation?)
| paulddraper wrote:
| The S3 protocol (particularly the authentication) is
| unnecessarily complex and could have used existing simpler
| choices.
| bcye wrote:
| off-topic but it really is awesome on how many OSS projects
| Horizon/NLnet/NextGen Europe pops up.
| ksk23 wrote:
| Beautiful.
| donatj wrote:
| I wish 9p would be more generally available.
|
| Both Windows and Mac have 9p support built in and both have
| locked away from the end user. Windows has it exclusively for
| communication with WSL. macOS has 9p but it's exclusively for
| communication with it's virtualization system. It would be
| amazing if I could just mount 9p from the UI.
| mightysashiman wrote:
| > FTP is dead
|
| Says who?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This seems like another article where they never define the
| acronym they use and expect everyone to have seen it already.
|
| _WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of
| extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which
| allows user agents to collaboratively author contents directly in
| an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concurrency
| control and namespace operations, thus allowing the Web to be
| viewed as a writeable, collaborative medium and not just a read-
| only medium.[1] WebDAV is defined in RFC 4918 by a working group
| of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV
| 93n wrote:
| Native WebDAV mount support in Android would be handy. I use
| davx5 (https://github.com/bitfireAT/davx5-ose), but accessing
| files is a bit clunky.
|
| I like WebDAV because it 'just works' with the mTLS infra I had
| already setup on my homelab for access from the outside world.
|
| I use sftpgo (https://sftpgo.com/) on the server side.
| apitman wrote:
| IMO the achilles heel of "Web"DAV is that there doesn't seem to
| be an easy way to add it to web apps, which precludes using it as
| a remote file system a la Google Drive. I'm assuming this is
| because browsers won't let you make PROPFIND et al requests, but
| I haven't actually tested that.
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