HOWTO on interfacing with gnupg/pgp?

[Pedro Díaz Jiménez]

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Hi,
On Monday 18 June 2001 17:57, Werner Koch wrote:
>  || On Mon, 18 Jun 2001 18:58:17 +0000
>  || Pedro Díaz Jiménez <pdiaz88@terra.es> wrote:
>
>  pdj> any pattented algoritms in gnupg, but lets face it. Sometimes, some
> of us pdj> have to use them (one of my teachers uses pgp 2.x). and patching
> gnupg pdj> sources doesn't seem clear to me. Does gnupg support any kind of
> plugin
>
> You want to trade in usability for freedom.  The GNU project does not
> do this.

No I don't!. I just wanna let the user do this trade if he/she wants/needs. 

>
> One of the reasons for the plugin code in GnuPG is that the IDEA and RSA
> patent are not valid in all countries (especially RSA) and therefore we
> wanted
> to allow users in those countries to be able to use these algorithms
> and more easily replace their proprietary PGP[1] with Free Software.  It
> was a pitty that this was not possible for most users.  Since Sep 20th 2000
> there is no more reason for using PGP because the RSA patent expired.
> There is almost no reason to use IDEA anymore because we have other
> algorithms which are at least as strong as IDEA.
>
> And it is a good idea to adhere to standards. PGP 2 is not OpenPGP
> compliant and has a few security weaknesses.
>
> By still using IDEA you are giving the proponents of software patents
> a momentum - we have to fight software patents and if it is
> only[1] to protect our Free Software.
>

I agree. Software patents are evil

> So please don't expect from a GNU project that it will ever support
> proprietary software.

Thats a little drastic, don't your think?. Take a look out there. There's a 
whole bunch of GPL'd programs that support propietary software. 

Abiword opens .doc files (more or less). 
xmms plays .mp3 files. 
Gimp edits .gif files.  
The linux kernel supports a wide variety of propietary filesystems
.
.
and so on...

the reason that abiword can open .doc files is not because they think its the 
better format out there. They do it because they are flexible. More or less 
occurs with the other examples. They say: ''hey, we don't like it, but we can 
also do that.". 


Anyway, I understand your point of view. As the gnupg user base grows, it 
will become more and more the 'de facto' standard, implicity promoting the 
use of non-pattented algoritms. thats good


- -- not related topic --

Whats the status of gcrypt?. Seems an interesting project. I've always 
thought frontends to executables are not a clean way to interact with 
programs. In my opinion, library level is cleaner




>
> Ciao,
Cheers
	Pedro

>
>    Werner
>
>
> [1] A very old version of PGP 2 used to be under the GPL but it used
> to be encumbered by some further restrctions.  PGP 2.6 is not available
> under the GPL but under a semi-free license; however due to the
> mandory use of a patented algorithm it is not usefule.  PGP 5 and 6
> are proprietary software and 7 is even closed source.
>

Didn't know about that. 
PGP 7 is closed source?. Wow

> [2] as you probably know, software patents are not only a threat to
> Free Sotware but also the majority of proprietary software vendors.
> See http://www.noepatents.org for further information.

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