keys require a user-id

Robert J. Hansen rjh at sixdemonbag.org
Mon May 18 02:23:23 CEST 2020


> I'm just curious as to what this "GNU" way is? I assume you would 
> just a non identifiable email address and then either leave your
> name blank, incomplete, or just plain incorrect.

GNU is a project by the Free Software Foundation.  They're very focused
on what they call "free software", where freedom is about liberty and
not price.  (Most people call it "open source software" instead, but FSF
and GNU are very particular about the language they use.)

FSF and GNU are both very concerned about the spread of proprietary
formats.  For instance, for many years only Microsoft Word could read
.doc files.  This was a problem for people who wished to only use free
software.

So the FSF/GNU way was, whenever someone tried to send them a document
in a proprietary format, was to tell the sender

> "I'd love to be able to work with you on this document, but you're 
> using a proprietary format I can't read.  There's an open format we 
> can both use, though, and I'd be happy to help you get started with 
> it."

GnuPG is part of the GNU project.  I think we should use the standard
GNU response when people want us to use certificate formats that don't
comply with the OpenPGP standard.

You can learn more about the FSF at:

	https://www.fsf.org/about/

You can learn more about GNU at:

	http://www.gnu.org/gnu/about-gnu.html

Hope this helps.



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