PGP & GPG compatibility

[David Shaw]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 08:50:22PM +0000, Adam Back wrote:

> GPG on the other hand is simply wilfully damaging interoperability by
> putting their anti-patent stance over the benefit of PGP users.  I
> know there are modules to add IDEA support but they're not shipped by
> default so most people don't use them.
> 
> It seems that the result of GPG and PGP intentionally induced
> incompabilities has greatly reduced PGP use.  I used to use PGP a lot,
> these days I use it a lot less, most uses induce all kinds of problems
> to the extent that most people resort to using plaintext.
> 
> If the -pgp2 option implies that GPG will then ship with IDEA and that
> there is a way to request PGP2 compability that is a good step.

I don't believe this means GPG will ship with IDEA.  The new GPG does,
however, make things terribly obvious at to what needs to happen to
enable IDEA by printing out a URL for a web page that explains the
whole situation when IDEA is needed but not present.  I'm not sure if
that web page currently has a link to download the IDEA plugin, but
(IMO) it should.

The --pgp2 option requests PGP2 compatibility.  It causes no harm to
leave it enabled all the time, in which case it effectively gives you
this:

> However it should be possible to automatically select that option
> based on the public key parameters of the person you're sending to,

With --pgp2 set, GPG will be PGP2 compatible if at all possible, and
if the user insists on doing something that would render the message
not usable by PGP2, it prints a message explaining what the user did
that was not compatible and warns that the message will not be usable
by PGP2.  Either way, the message should still be usable with GPG and
PGP 6 & 7, of course.

I am very concerned with interoperability issues using GPG.  If
someone is having a particular problem, I'd love to hear it so I can
at least try to do something about it (I wrote the --pgp2 option as
well).

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  dshaw at jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
      We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson



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