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How to Save PGP
Tomcat666 sends in: "The Register got some excerpts from an interview with Phil Zimmerman. He talks about how it might be possible to save PGP (Network Associates couldn't sell it, and will stop its development), OpenPGP and the future (industry-backed OpenPGP?)." A follow-up to our story yesterday about Network Associates mothballing PGP.
This isn't the end of PGP. OpenPGP is always going to be around. (or almost always - its open but everyone could decide to trash it if they like)
This is the end of commercial PGP. This isn't a good thing for PGP to be used in commercial settings. Also this is the end of the PGPDesktop which was the only thing close to an option for (l)users.
Hopefully NSI will release the code in a manner that will allow a smaller company to add value and repackage it to large corporations.
$sig=$1 if($brain =~
How about Amnesty International who uses PGP to keep their researchers who are in dangerous parts of the world, and the people who inform them safe from governments who would think nothing of searching their laptops? PGP has saved lives of good people who without it wouldn't have access to encryption secure enough to trust their lives with.
Think about that, how many computer programs would you trust your life with?
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
That's not the real problem. PGP don't create terrorist, and we all know that encrypted mail/files aren't the only way to pass secret information. I belive we should all care about crypto. Like Phill Zimmerman says roughly: E-Mails are like postcards, PGP is just a tool to get you mail messages into an envelope. Privacy is the real issue about tools like PGP, if you are willing to let it go, goverments, industries and peoples will sooner or later abuse you rights. You're not free when you are always looked upon.
Colosse.
In the article Phil focuses on easy to use GUI interfaces for less technically adept end users as the major feature that the OpenPGP/GPG projects need to focus on. This is the main advantage that the commerical version provided, and the main thing lacking in all the other alternatives.
He clearly states that the PGP protocol is in no danger whatsoever, and will continue to remain widely implemented.
Having spent many hours deciphering gpg command lines to use PGP to its full potential makes you realize how usefull a simple, easy to use GUI interface to a PGP would be. (Implicit in this task is integration with other applications, however, you can find plugin support for almost anything that you wish to use PGP in)
The commerical PGP is only one implementation of the open PGP standard. Even up to 6.5.8, full source code was available from Network Associates.
Plus, there is GPG, PGPi, and other freeware implementations of the standard (under the umbrella of OpenPGP.org).
I don't see why "PGP" as a whole is going down.
It's like saying if Microsoft or Netscape decided to stop relasing browsers, then the entire WWW is doomed, when there's still Konquerer, Opera, Mozilla, and the whole W3C standards body, etc...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
specifically what does it add over GPG?
Usability? GUI?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Because as we know, we should look to the closed source community (Microsoft, what?) for all our security needs. At least open source doesn't try to deal with security problems by denying they exist.
It didn't even take 10 minutes... Can someone tell me what PGP being open/closed source has to do with Microsoft? Last I checked NAI was the vendor of the product, and it was CLOSED source. From what I've heard this is an excellent product, and it's a shame to loose, no matter what plaform you run. Just because something is Open Source doesn't mean it's better. Do you think that the majority of the best coders do work for free, or for profit? And despite what you may think, some of the most talented people in this industry work at Microsoft (and NAI for that matter)... As for public vs. non-public disclosure of security issues, I'm sure that MS has plenty of reasons for NOT releasing their vulnerabilities. They have to take things into consideration that the Open Source community does not. With all the MS haters out there, as SOON as a vulnerability is announced, there are tens of thousands of script kiddies in their basement trying to wreak havoc on the Internet. Should there be vulnerabilities? No, but it's a fact of ANY software development. It doesn't mean there aren't a thousand people at MS slaving away trying to make their products better. Have a little more respect and appreciation for the scale of the systems we are even able to create nowadays. Damn zealots.
Compiles fine on most Linux distributions. It needed a small amount of help to compile on Mac OS X
Yes, but in the Real World we still need to support Windows.
Note that GPGME isn't really a GPG library. It uses the GPG command-line behind the scenes, so it is inherently unportable - you can't get IO from another running process in ISO C.
When I suggested creating a PGP library, I meant a true library. Make the code ISO9899 compliant, then the only issue is linking it to the front end.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.