[6429] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: "Gale", a secure, distributed, open-source chat system
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eivind Eklund)
Wed Jan 19 14:34:20 2000
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 20:15:37 +0100
From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.org>
To: Ryan Lackey <ryan@venona.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@algebra.com, cryptography@c2.net
Message-ID: <20000119201537.A3791@bitbox.follo.net>
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In-Reply-To: <20000118202024.D11875@leopard.venona.net>; from ryan@venona.com on Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 08:20:24PM -0800
On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 08:20:24PM -0800, Ryan Lackey wrote:
> The main competition for gale is:
> * IRC
> IRC is used by perhaps 100 000 users worldwide. IRC affords
> no message encryption, minimal authentication (identd is
> sometimes used, which is almost worse than nothing at all),
> and has a culture built around "/kick", banning users, channel
> takeovers, and general childishness; the public networks are
> not really suited for professional use. IRC is a perfect example
> of why security should be designed into network protocols rather
> than relying on social pressure.
This is off by at least an order of magnitude, probably two. The four
largest IRC networks sums up to twice this number of users -
simulatenously, all the time.
Eivind.
