bye bye RTMP

curl is dropping RTMP protocol support after nearly 16 years, with the removal landing in version 8.20.0 (April 29, 2026). The decision was driven by zero test coverage in both curl and the upstream librtmp project, no upstream commits in over a year, and extremely low user adoption (only 2.2% in the 2025 user survey). The removal covers all six RTMP URL schemes (rtmp, rtmpe, rtmps, rtmpt, rtmpte, rtmpts), bringing curl's supported URL scheme count down to 27. The team gave six months' notice across release notes and videos, and no users stepped up to maintain or test the feature.