FAQ: drop mention of 1.4?

Werner Koch wk at gnupg.org
Fri Sep 4 10:46:49 CEST 2015


On Fri,  4 Sep 2015 09:54, johanw at vulcan.xs4all.nl said:

> Never IMO. This attitude leads to data being lost forever because new
> software can't read it anymore while the cost of adding read-only
> support is small.

No, that is entirely wrong.  The whole PGP-2 stuff has been removed and
thus most code paths have been simplified.

How often shall I repeat: We keep on supporting PGP-2 in 1.4 and thus
there is no need to talk about lost data.  You just have to use the
right tool.

A real world problem is how to maintain the hardware to actually access
that old data.  For example I have some old hard disks and even an
ST-506 controller board.  However, that is a full size ISA board and I
do not have a motherboard to use it.  I also have tape drive somewhere
to read my >10 year old backups but no SCSI controller readily
available.

The common archiving practice is to copy data to new media every few
years.  For encrypted data which is still considered confidential you
need to re-encrypt it anyway to keep it safe.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.




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