GPG and PGP

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Tuesday 15 March 2011, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
> On 3/15/11 3:53 PM, Ben McGinnes wrote:
> > It's simple, data which may have been encrypted 15+ years ago may
> > still have value to the people who encrypted it, even if they have
> > since chosen to move from older programs (e.g. PGP 2.x) for their
> > current needs.
> 
> This may not be so much an argument for IDEA's inclusion as it might
> be an argument for data migration.  How long will we support
> RFC1991? There are really only two interesting answers: "forever"
> and "for a while."
> 
> If forever, then sure, IDEA support, v3 keys, etc., etc.
> 
> If not-forever, then we should start talking about when precisely
> we'll stop supporting RFC1991, and how we can help users migrate
> away.

Why migrate away? Even if GnuPG 3 stops supporting RFC1991 there will 
always be GnuPG 1 and GnuPG 2 around to decrypt ancient data and verify 
signatures made decades ago. That's the beauty of Free Software. Nobody 
can take it away and since it's Open Source it will always be possible 
to compile it on new OSes (provided we will be able/allowed to install 
what we want on those OSes).

I fully understand that some people will want to migrate but I don't 
think an easy migration path should be one of the guiding design goals 
for a version not supporting RFC1991.


Regards,
Ingo
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