From: "Pat Farrell" <pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 05:17:31 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RE: Software infrastructure
Message-ID: <32140.pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In Message Tue, 1 Jun 1993 22:13:48 -0500,
  Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>Let's go back to the DOS-as-terminal issue.  The politics and
>economics of DOS shareware is such that source code is almost never
>made available.
>
>I propose that interested cypherpunks write a DOS terminal program
>which _is_ free software.

I think writing a "terminal" program, such as Kermit, is not particularly
useful. I am writing a SMTP/POPPER client program that will work over
standard serial (dial-up) lines. It will not require SLIP, PPP, or any
other magic (mostly because getting _my university_ to provide competent
TCP/IP access is impossible). Enhancing it to support SLIP or PPP will be
simple, but it is not the market that I'm aiming at.

Clearly any decent mail client has to have a roledex of commonly accessed
coorespondents. It is trivial to enhance the data structure to add a flag
that says "Use encryption" and another with "PGP (or RIPEM) key available"
and another to hold a handle (PGP's 0x123456) that identifies the key.
Spawning your favorite encryption program is then also trivial.

The audience is not the cypherpunks. The audience for strong cryptography
is the art, history, econ or english major. It has to be "pig easy"
and reliable.

My program is written for Windows. Like it or not, Windows has 80% or more
of the total computers being sold. I want my mailer client to reach mass
markets.

The program will be free, and sources will be available under some
restrictions that I haven't yet figured out.

In a while, I'll be looking for beta testers.

Pat

Pat Farrell      Grad Student                 pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu
Department of Computer Science    George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Public key availble via finger          #include <standard.disclaimer>