From: bureau42 Anonymous Remailer <nobody@bureau42.ml.org>
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 1997 08:42:16 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: PGP compatibility
Message-ID: <iNX3RsnMvFVAxjTpyHr4HQ==@bureau42.ml.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Lucky Green wrote:

>Of course your copy of PGP 5.0 is compatible with prior versions. I know
>this, you know this, and the anonymous author claiming otherwise knows
>this. He simply hopes that there are some people that don't know this. The
>idea behind the original post and others like it over the last few days is
>to spread FUD about PGP 5.0 after other attacks failed for lack of merrit.
>If you repeat a lie often enough, eventually some people will believe you.
>PSYOPS 101. Let's not fall for it.

>[Yes, I know that DSA keys can not be read by PGP 2.6. Neither will Word
>1.0 read Word 7.0 files. So what?]

Let me guess, Lucky, you're using Windows, right? If I was a Windows user
exclusively I probably wouldn't give a damn either. Robert's version is
compatable because he's gone to strides to *make* it compatable. Most users
haven't done this.

PGP Inc. has taken a *multi-platform* *network-wide* system and broken it.
They released a Windows version months ago completely severing lines of
communication between 5.0 and 2.x users. 

Finally, after months, they get around to releasing a UNIX version so that
everybody else can use PGP 5.x. Of course the damned thing *still* isn't
stable, *still* has a timebomb in it, and *still* has the command line
broken. PGP Inc. recommends that people report bugs, get new versions, etc.
at http://beta.pgp.com, but as was covered in detail in another posting that
site is a pretty much disabled (or incomplete if you want to think of it
that way).

Microsoft Word is something completely different. We aren't distributing
Word 7.0 documents all over the Internet as a standard communications
practice.

When I encrypt a message to you using PGP 2.6, I'm using a version of a
program which is released for certain platforms. When I encrypt a message to
you using PGP 5.0 I'm using a version which is released for certain
platforms, but not all the platforms 2.x was available on. 5.x produces
messages which are incompatable with 2.x. As a result 2.x users, which
includes the UNIX community (which, last I checked, was rather large), 
are excluded from the message traffic the Windows users are sending
around. Of course I'm talking about signatures and sometimes encryption, 
but, again, last I checked that was a major reason to use PGP in the first 
place.

Then again, given the quality of the average Window user's message traffic
on the network today maybe that isn't such a great loss.

It should be worthy of note that I'd be using one of the betas for 5.x right
now if the PGP folks hadn't purposefully broken every script known to man. I
can comment out the timebomb for the expired (i.e. broken in yet another
way) versions they're releasing, or at least were as of last week.

Let's redefine SMTP, NNTP, FTP, and HTTP so that they looks nothing like what 
currently exists, install it on major providers, and write a set of UNIX 
clients. When Windows and Mac users complain about this we can all stand up 
proudly and proclaim that they'll just have to wait a few months for somebody 
to write the software which will allow them to again take part, and that their
complaining about this completely idiotic tactic is "FUD". And, of course,
since the SMTP2, NNTP2, HTTP2, and FTP2 protocols are so much better than
their previous versions (that wouldn't be too hard) this is all very smart and
nobody should mind.

If PGP Inc. had released a sane UNIX version along with their Mac and
Winblows versions there would be considerably less bitching happening right
now. Hell, they could have released patches for 2.6. Instead they've waited 
months and still don't have one out which works.