We have GOT TO make things simpler

Robert J. Hansen rjh at sixdemonbag.org
Sat Oct 5 16:00:53 CEST 2019


> Everybody speaks https or smtps and probably S/MIME but what about
> OpenPGP?

S/MIME adoption has far exceeded OpenPGP's in the world of email for a
simple reason:

You can make a whole ton of money as an S/MIME CA.

OpenPGP was designed such as to, as far as possible, cut centralized
trusted introducers out of the equation.  Of course, those centralized
trusted introducers are also the groups with the greatest ability to
influence market decisions.  ("While you're buying new SSL certs for
your business, have you thought about email security?  We offer S/MIME
certs for affordable prices...")

S/MIME prevailed over OpenPGP not for technical decisions, but economic
ones.  Given this is a technical mailing list, we should probably just
give a grudging nod in the direction of Adam Smith and his Invisible
Hand and move on to more technically-oriented lines of discussion.



More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list