[8147] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Is PGP broken?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Fri Dec 1 18:13:24 2000
From: <Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
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Message-Id: <14884.50953.876567.287556@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:06:17 +0100 (CET)
To: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org>
Cc: nelson@crynwr.com, cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <200011290359.WAA01120@cypherspace.org>
Adam Back writes:
> And lastly even if they had done it right, GPG went in and fucked it
> up some more by sticking religiously to the "don't use patented
> algorithms" free software mantra to the huge detriment of PGP
> interoperability.
You have to agree that the "not using patented algorithms" thing
solves the problem once and for all, if in a somewhat Gordian way
(partly breaking backwards compatibility). We would never had any
problems if not for PGP screwing it up -- by using potentially
problematic pieces of code. As PGP's track record went from "angelic"
to "distinctly tarnished", I stopped using it. Many other people I
know did as well. I've switched to GPG, which hasn't got any track
record so far, once it became stable. We'll wait and see how they do.
I don't think there is currently any alternative to GPG. (The king is
dead, long live the king). In fact I'm surprised this isn't as evident
as I expected, since it is being discussed here. Please tell me why I
should stop using GPG and go back to using PGP, any version of it.
