WebDAV is a trainwreck. SFTP could be nice but the OpenSSH impl falls terribly short as a FTPd replacement (the most useful implementation is ironically the one in ProFTPd). Sendfile never went anywhere. Network filesystems don't cut the FTP use-case either.
People don't use FTP because they like it. They use it for the lack of a viable alternative.
cleaver and sehugg have both mentioned rsync, which I also think is a viable alternative. If possible, I try to use scp - is there any reason neither of these are viable alternatives?
The only reason I ever use ftp is because I'm forced to with my godaddy hosting.
For many use-cases rsync and scp are not adequate. For example neither can provide a file-listing or interactively walk a tree, which is essential for a wide range of push-based or fileserver-style applications.
No way to chroot users to their home, generally finicky configuration (way too easy to give users shell-access by accident), no bandwidth throttling or other advanced ftp features, rather limited logging/auditing.
WebDAV is a trainwreck. SFTP could be nice but the OpenSSH impl falls terribly short as a FTPd replacement (the most useful implementation is ironically the one in ProFTPd). Sendfile never went anywhere. Network filesystems don't cut the FTP use-case either.
People don't use FTP because they like it. They use it for the lack of a viable alternative.