On Thu, Aug 03, 2000 at 09:10:21PM -0500, Oliver Xymoron wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> > PGP was hampered more by itself and its complex archane interface
> > more than anything else. RSA couldn't stop it or even slow it down
> > (and certainly not outside the US where the RSA algorithm wasn't patented).
> > The US government couldn't slow it down once it got outside the US
> > borders. The PGP interface was it's own worse enemy.
> I'd argue that the lack of standardization/integration was the problem.
> MIME sucks, but it's still everywhere. If mailer hooks to PGP were more
> universal and transparent, PGP's interface wouldn't have mattered. Receive
> key with trusted signature? -> File it. Send a message -> recipient's key
> in addressbook? -> automatically encrypt. Otherwise just sign.
I would agree with you NOW. Not back then, though. Back then,
the only competition was PEM (and that was years after PGP was on the
scene) and S/MIME was not even a dream. There was no standard what-so-
ever and PGP was addressing more than just E-Mail. Plain mime existed
back then, but it sucked canal water back then too. It CERTAINLY was
not the paragon of interoperability back when PGP 2.3 was king.
Mike
-- Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw@WittsEnd.com (The Mad Wizard) | (770) 331-2437 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/ NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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