when ftpcopy fails to copy a directory due to, for instance, no anonymous ftp server on the host, ftpcopy silently reports a return code of 1, but does not write any helpful message to stderr. On success, it writes plenty messages about what is copied.
I've pointed the base package maintainer to this bug report.
Please reopen this if you can provide a test case; this isn't happening here. ftpcopy -u user.does.not.exist -p testing ftp://ftp.redhat.de/ test ftpcopy: USER response: 530 Login incorrect. ftpcopy ftp://csl11.nrw.net/ test ftpcopy: USER response: 530 User anonymous access denied
ftpcopy used to exit with code 1 and without any error message if the remote directory to be copied is completely empty. This has been changed for version 0.3.6 (it will exit 0).