Re: PGP fingerprints in CREDITS file?

Kai Henningsen (kai-debian@khms.westfalen.de)
25 May 1996 00:14:00 +0200


torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi (Linus Torvalds) wrote on 15.05.96 in <Pine.LNX.3.91.960515095405.27927F-100000@linux.cs.Helsinki.FI>:

> Too bad Zimmerman wasn't convicted - he wasn't guilty of breaking any
> silly cryptography laws, but he _was_ guilty of very bad programming. The
> PGP single-character escape stuff is broken, in bad taste, and should not
> be allowed (*).
>
> The people who created MIME not only should be convicted, they should be
> shot on the spot. I have a reasonably mime-aware mailer (pine), but I
> _still_ have more problems with MIME mail than I ever had with non-MIME.
> I'm seriously considering refusing to even look at mails or patches that
> use MIME-encoding other than cleartext.

The only people that should be shot, on the spot or otherwise, are people
suggesting stuff like shooting or imprisoning other people for "crimes"
that, at worst, amount to different opinions, even if the suggestion was
only in jest.

Being the inventor of the best OS ever is not an excuse - if anything,
posting from a position of authority makes it worse.

I obviously feel quite strongly about this - maybe because this part of
the world has had bad experiences (to use an euphemism) with killing
people for their opinions (or even only behaviour to an ethnic group).

MfG Kai