IDEA patent vs the recent USPTO memorandum

[Robert J. Hansen]

vedaal at hush.com wrote:
> if only there were a gnupg mini-version with a shorter source-code,
> (or at least one that's readable by someone looking at it from 
> scratch, not just reading the updates and patches as they go along)
> then i'd gladly switch

This is doable.  I did this in '99 for GnuPG 1.0.  I haven't done it
since, but given the codebase is still in the same ballpark, size-wise,
I find it hard to believe it's impossible today.

It seems strange to imagine there's someone not capable of auditing the
GnuPG code, but is capable of auditing the PGP 2.6 code.

Having read both codebases (albeit not a recent GnuPG codebase), I found
GnuPG's code to be much clearer and easier to understand than PGP 2.6's.