From: anon1df3@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Paul Grange)
Date: Mon, 9 May 94 15:12:10 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: PGP 2.5
Message-ID: <9405092209.AA21090@nyx10.cs.du.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


|> Another RSAREF limitation is that it cannot cope with keys longer than
|> 1024 bits.  PGP now prints a reasonably polite error message in such a
|> case.

|Reasonably polite?  It says "Error: Bad pass phrase."  That doesn't
|sound at all polite to me.  And since my key is 1234 bits, I'm vastly
|unimpressed.  What in the world is the point of this restriction?

|I see a lot of "what it is" but not "why it is" in the docs.  Would one of

This restrcition comes from RSAREF code, over which the PGP team had no 
control.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to me the development of a 
free, legal, source code version of PGP is such a positive development 
that it easily outweighs any of the problems (key sigs, incompatibility 
with big keys, etc.) that the new release has brought about.  When the 
jump from verison 1 to verison 2 was made, everyone's key became 
obsolete, and everyone survived.  Everyone will survive this time, too.

I'm also very pleased with some of the new features (like the default for 
PGPPATH, which will make PGP a lot more accessible to casual users).