mutt smime support

[Thomas Roessler]

On 2001-10-10 17:10:05 +0200, Werner Koch wrote:

>The problem in using OpenSSL is that it is not GPL compatible.  So 
>there is no way for us to base it on OpenSSL.

There is no problem with calling other, OpenSSL-based command line 
utilities from GPLed software.  Just produce a well-defined, 
command-line-based interface.

(Oh, and also try to avoid using the GPL whereever you can. ;->)

BTW, I seem to recall that there's another SSL implementation from 
Netscape/the Mozilla project which may also have the things you are 
looking for.

>We should discuss with Thomas on how to create a common MOSS 
>interface. The currently used command line interface is somewhat 
>limited.

I'd seriously prefer to stick with a command line interface to the 
cryp to back-end - it's most easily integrated in all kinds of 
scripts and programs, the interface can easily be made configurable, 
and it's most compatible to the Unix paradigm of small tools which 
do one thing well.

On 2001-10-10 17:19:05 +0200, Stefan Marsiske wrote:

>MOSS???

Basically the predecessor of S/MIME - it was an attempt to marry PEM 
(Privacy-Enhanced Mail) with MIME.  While MOSS and PEM themselves 
aren't used any more, MOSS is where multipart/signed and 
multipart/encrypted come from.  Much of the basic design paradigm 
for S/MIME and PGP/MIME comes from there.

However, it should be noted that MOSS falls rather nicely apart into 
two layers: MIME handling and crypto handling.  In particular, the 
cryptography layer does not need to know _anything_ about MIME. 
Thus, designing things with MIME and crypto in mind at the same time 
may be a bad idea for most of the software you are going to write.

Just think about encrypting and signing arbitrary data which is fed 
through some pipe or temporary file from some other, undefined 
layer.  This data may have been ripped out of a MIME message, and it 
may also have a MIME structure itself - but that's none of the 
crypto back-end's business.

MIME handling, on the other hand, is most likely being done vastly 
different in different mail user agents, so sharing code to do that 
would be quite difficult.

However, that MIME handling isn't the complex part with integrating 
*/MIME, once you have the back-end: Getting key selection done right 
is.  And that's another thing which is closely related to the MUA's 
structure, design and code.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        http://log.does-not-exist.org/