On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> 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.
I wasn't proposing _using_ MIME, silly. I was pointing out that MIME
succeeded in a way that PGP didn't - by getting on the standard track and
getting tightly integrated. PGP failed because using it for it's primary
application is tedious in a way that attaching a file to an email
wasn't.
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