ietf-openpgp
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Re: What do we have to do today?

1997-10-30 21:00:59
 
I don't know of any other pgp developers that have even started on the
ElGamal side, I have asked on pgp-dev.
 
I have Elgamal in cryptlib (modulo keygen at the moment), but as you say, 
nobody outside the US cares about it.  I added Elgamal mainly because some 
people I know in the US asked for it and it wasn't that much work (again, 
modulo the keygen which is a real bastard to do quickly and efficiently).  In 
NZ and Australia neither RSA nor IDEA are patented, so everyone just sticks 
with that they know from PGP 2.x.  
 
I agree with Ian that RSA should be left in for non-US implementors who don't 
have to worry about patents.  For us the concern is getting people to use the 
implementation, people have heard of, and trust, RSA, people can sometimes be 
persuaded to use DSA, but noone outside the crypto/security community has ever 
heard of Elgamal, and it's going to be a tough job going to someone who barely 
knows how to spell RSA and convincing them to use a different algorithm 
they've never heard of before.
 
Peter.