ietf-openpgp
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Re: expedience, consensus and editing

1997-11-27 01:26:39
Dave Crocker <dcrocker(_at_)imc(_dot_)org> writes:
Ok.  So you implement armor and I implement MIME.  How do we interoperate?

Assuming that we have reached a consensus that MIME is a MAY or SHOULD,
but not a MUST, then how indeed do we cope?  Here's some suggestions.

1. Binary.  There is a compatible interoperability mode as long as 8-bit
comms is in place.  Of course, nobody is going to use it, but this mode
at least suits the letter of the IETF dictum that there MUST be a
compatibility mode accepted by all.

2. You implement Armour.  As you have discussed, it is quite similar,
not a technical difficulty at all.  One might be able to get buy with a
subset.  I can probably hunt up some freeware code for you.  If you've
got to add PGP anyway...

3. Encourage the 4 million to somehow upgrade to MIME MUAs.  This is no
great difficulty, given the awesome marketing machine that is 25 million
and doing very nicely, thank you.

4. Encourage the software developers to implement MIME in older software
like pgp2.6.  I'm open to bribery.

5. Install ordinary PGP on your machine.  Comes with Armour.

6. Switch to cleartext.  Comms in the clear is often better than no
comms.

7. Don't Communicate.  Given the compelling view that 25.1 million MIME
users can't be wrong, you shouldn't be too worried about the 4 million
older non-MIME users.


That's the problem with a broken standard.  There'll be so many bypass
options to choose from :-)

-- 
iang                                      systemics.com

FP: 1189 4417 F202 5DBD  5DF3 4FCD 3685 FDDE on pgp.com

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