GnuPG Defaults

[Robert J. Hansen]

John Clizbe wrote in response to Kevin Hilton:
> Because RSA was patent-encumbered up until Sept 6, 2000?

When PGP 2.6 first came out, there was a big legal kerfuffle over
intellectual property rights to the RSA and IDEA algorithms.

When PGP 5 came out, PGP embraced different, non-encumbered algorithms
(DSA and CAST5).

Since OpenPGP grew directly out of PGP 5, OpenPGP gets a lot of
historical baggage from PGP 5's decisions.

That's the nutshell explanation.