Adam Back says:
I just read the spec end to end, and I think I found an example of the
sort of problem Tom is referring to, from:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-openpgp-formats-05.txt
............... For example (as Tom has been pointing out) it says
Elliptic Curve.........
PROBLEM: no definition of any Elliptic Curve parameters.
Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem is a VERY nice idea. Unfortunately,
despite the fac that its inventors intentionally did not patent
it, it is vastly covered by various patents. I heard that even
some eliptic curves have been patented! [How stupid was I not
to patent myself a few millions of primes. :-]
For at least some of those patents there appears to be no
freeware route (i.e. you pay for licening regardless).
So I doubt that open-pgp will be able to include ECC.
--
Regards,
Uri uri(_at_)watson(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com
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