Bug#986997: O: netkit-telnet -- basic telnet client

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 21:18:03 +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Chris Hofstaedtler <zeha@debian.org> writes:
> > * Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> [210415 19:06]:
> >> Hi!  Upstream is not maintained either -- at least the download URL in
> >> netkit-telnet's debian/copyright file does not work.  How about dropping
> >> netkit-telnet from Debian?
> >
> > In #982253 I've expressed that I for one would find that to be a
> > good idea. But quite clearly it is work that needs to be a) done and
> > b) well coordinated.
> 
> I'm happy to work on replacing netkit-based tools with inetutils once
> bullseye is out, although Guillem have to agree since he maintains
> inetutils in Debian.  If something needs to be modified in inetutils to
> be more compatible with netkit, I will help to arrange that.

That'd be great, thanks! I think I've mentioned before, but in any
case getting #945861 fixed would be nice, as I took a look but run
out of time trying to figure out what was the problem.

Adding TLS support to both inetutils telnet and telnetd would also be
great, even though inetutils versions support Kerberos, but I think
probably more people might use TLS enabled telnet than Kerberos
enabled telnet. This might make it possible to also get rid of
telnet-ssl and telnetd-ssl.

> Starting
> with telnet+telnetd seems like a good idea.

I've not checked if there are any differences in the options,
otherwise I'd be fine with adding a transitional package, to smooth
the upgrade, and then simply just provide telnet and telnetd (in
addition to telnet-client and telnet-server) virtual packages.

> Btw, the suggestion to symlink telnet to netcat is not a good one:
> telnet is a complex protocol, netcat doesn't support any of it as far as
> I know.

I agree.

Thanks,
Guillem