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Is There a Future for PGP?
Thom Dyson asks: "So it looks like McAfee is walking away from PGP. At least that's how I interpret their marketing
speak. I've been told PGP doesn't work on XP, does that hold true
for the Open Source version as well?"
I agree 100% with you, and I'm thinking specifically of Usenet. I can imagine a Usenet where everyone has a certificate signed by a trusted authority, or signed by someone who was signed by a trusted authority.
When a message is posted, the certificate goes along for the ride. Everything must check out before the server accepts the message.
If someone spams, their certificate is revoked. If someone is signing spammers certificates consistently, then THEIR certificate is revoked.
It would make a HUGE dent in the usability of the Usenet, and unlike Usenet II, it wouldn't require a system of trusted servers.
I've thought about this for a while, and I'm very interested in what others think of this scheme.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
- PGP on Windows XP. PGPtray works, PGP for Outlook XP is dodgy, PGPdisk is broken and PGPnet will hork your system. At least, those are the reports on alt.security.pgp.
- NAI is walking away from PGP. This is a Good Thing, believe it or not. Or, at the very least, not a Bad Thing. PGP has always existed in two different components with totally different agendas:
- The community's agenda is to enhance individual liberties and ensure electronic privacy.
- The corporation's agenda is to turn a profit.
- The community is alive and well. There are a lot of individuals who are interested (and some who are genuinely obsessed!) with the notion of personal privacy and personal liberties. The GNU Privacy Guard crowd is part of this community--so what if their initials are GPG instead of PGP? So are the remailers, mixmasters and everyone else.
- NAI is dying. Due to the fact that I'm a former NAI employee, I'm not going to say more than that--except to recognize that Network Associates has a long history of buying great software companies and failing to capitalize on them. (Check out the San Jose Mercury-News from February 2001 for some brilliant examples.)
- Summary: the community is alive and kicking. GPG keeps getting better and better--at 500k, it's slim enough to fit on a floppy, it supports RFC2440 and RFC2440bis, and has good integration with almost all UNIX mailers. The WinPT and GPGshell programs give friendly Win32 front-ends (but both still need a lot of work).
... Don't panic. Unlike the Monty Python parrot sketch, PGP really is just resting.... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that those two agendas are not exactly in sync with each other.