At 12:27 PM +0200 10/11/00, Thomas Roessler wrote:
On 2000-10-11 11:25:52 +0200, Werner Koch wrote:
I dropped IDEA because I don't see a reason to support that
patented algorithm anymore - now that there is another well
analyzed new algorithm available.
We don't need to add still more interoperability nightmares with the
old implementations which are still in use at some places. The
text-mode signature problems are bad enough already.
Sooner or later, we should start encouraging people away from PGP 2.
I like what Werner said -- he simply explicitly called out that IDEA is
needed for PGP 2 support.
The subtle, lovely thing about SHOULD is that SHOULD means "if you don't
understand the ramifications, do it." It allows anyone to say "I know what
I'm doing."
However, I like the idea of calling out that IDEA is there for backwards
compatibility. How about this paragraph:
---
Implementations MUST implement Triple-DES. Implementations SHOULD implement
AES-128 and CAST5. Implementations that interoperate with PGP 2.6 or
earlier need to support IDEA, as that is the only symmetric cipher those
versions use. Implementations MAY implement any other algorithm.
---
Jon