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Kermit ssh

Kermit resisted SSH firmly. You'll find leftover hints of their attitude at their telnetd page ("The Telnet and FTP protocols have options that provide for strong authentication and encryption just as SSH does.").

That's why I was surprised to see ssh support, though it was still obvious that Frank had a bad taste in his mouth about it.

From: fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Frank da Cruz)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.xenix.sco.comp.unix.unixware.misc
Subject: Re: Announcing C-Kermit 8.0 Beta.03
Date: 12 Sep 2001 15:35:04 GMT
Message-ID: <9nnvb8$en5$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> 

In article <3B9D40D2.CA0707BD@aplawrence.com>,
Tony Lawrence  <tony@aplawrence.com> wrote:
: Frank- that's great news, especially the ssh client.  What changed your mind
: about ssh?  Last time I mentioned it to you you said you couldn't or
: wouldn't, and that it was more than licensing issues.. obviously the
: licensing problems went away but what else changed?  Oh, well, I'm just glad
: it did!
: 
We didn't build ssh into C-Kermit; we simply added a way for C-Kermit to
use the external ssh program as a transport.  This gives you file transfer,
scripting, and character-set translation over an ssh connection, and frees
us from having to worry about SSH v1 versus v2 and all the changes in the
ssh scenery, not to mention licensing and export issues.  Let's hear it for
the UNIX building-block approach to software development.

Which is in stark contract to Windows, where we actually do have to build
SSH into our Kermit client, and it's taking months and months and months.

We are doing this simply because Kermit can't survive without it.  No matter
whether SSH is a good idea or an extremely poor one, everybody is retiring
Telnet in favor of it, even if what they should be doing is securing their
sites with manageable security methods such as Kerberos (this applies most
emphatically to large companies, universities, and government agencies).
The trade-off, as always, is ease of use versus utility.

- Frank
 

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