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Can GnuPG Deliver?

Posted by michael on from the as-long-as-men-are-capable-of-evil dept.

jso888 writes "After Network Associates decided to halt further development of PGP, I'm sure that many users like myself who use non-CLI platforms most of the time, wondered "what next?" (PGP Freeware is not an option, since it's tied into the Network Associates product). Salon today has a nice article on GnuPG, the Open PGP/GNU alternative. The article highlights one of the problems with Open Source software today: its "by the geek, for the geek" nature, which by and large places barriers to mass adoption of OSS, especially important capabilities like personal encryption. One of the nice things about NAI PGP was its ease of use and commercial polish. It was easy to install and use, and integrated nicely with Windows software like Eudora and ICQ. GnuPG, admittedly, isn't quite there yet, the article concludes. That's too bad; given the privacy-hostile world we live in, the last thing we need is another barrier to widespread cryptography adoption."

5 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, No! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Hey, you can't say that in public, even in code!

  2. Re:Make it Seamless, Silly. by Picass0 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've been using Gnu Privacy Assistant(GPA) for key maintenance and Evolution for email. Evolution has seamless GPA and PGP support.

    GPA features a GUI and is very straightforward to use. I'm an encryption retard and I figured it out.

  3. New Acronym Alert! by Bigger+R · · Score: 1, Funny

    IANAA but...

    //next accountant user, please respond in a better than Enron manner!

    R.

    --
    Beta only seems to work for Google. Such a shame.
  4. Re:secrets and PGP by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Funny
    And I don't understand the concept of PGP Sigs either..

    So what is this "PGP sig"? Is it a witty quip, or is it just some spam message you can't remove unless you upgrade from the free version?

    I'd rather use a product that lets me write my own sig.

  5. Re:Get PGP encryption into Mozilla by kronstadt · · Score: 2, Funny

    What should be the most popular bug is this one, as it is preventing the moz team from cleaning up this other one.