GPG in production. :)

[brian moore]

There is currently a move afoot to convert the Usenet NoCeM protocol
(http://www.cm.org/) from PGP2->PGP5 (and RSA->DH/DSS) for legal reasons
and the eventual abolishment of unauthenticated cancels.

Andrew Gierth, Annihilator's master and FAQ-maintainer for
comp.unix.programmer amongst other things, posted the following today,
which is good news for GPG and the OpenPGP standard. :)

| From: Andrew Gierth <andrew at erlenstar.demon.co.uk>
| Newsgroups: news.admin.nocem
| Subject: Annihilator changes
| Date: 24 Nov 1998 05:29:52 +0000
| 
| Annihilator is now signing some (not all) of its NoCeMs using the
| GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) in place of PGP.
| 
| The exact same signature algorithm and keys are being used, so this
| change should *not* affect users of the Annihilator nocems. I have
| verified that the notices still verify correctly using PGP v2.6.3i
| (other 2.6.x versions of PGP should work too).
| 
| This is primarily an operational experiment, testing GPG under
| production conditions with a view to migrating all my NoCeM-signing to
| use GPG in the short term, and in the longer term possibly moving away
| from RSA keys to other algorithms to allow users to avoid PGP and its
| licensing restrictions.
| 
| I will revert to using PGP if anyone finds they have a problem
| verifying the new signatures.
| 
| (GPG does not support RSA keys in its standard configuration; it
| requires the use of an add-on module. Use of RSA within the United
| States is subject to patents which still have a couple of years to
| run; outside the US it may be possible to use GPG+RSA without
| licensing problems.)


-- 
Brian Moore                       | "The Zen nature of a spammer resembles
      Sysadmin, C/Perl Hacker     |  a cockroach, except that the cockroach
      Usenet Vandal               |  is higher up on the evolutionary chain."
      Netscum, Bane of Elves.                 Peter Olson, Delphi Postmaster