GnuPG compatibility issues

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

John Abreau <jabr at blu.org> writes:

> As I recall, pgp 2.x and Pgp 5.x are mutually incompatible at the
> insistence of the FBI and NSA; I believe this was one of the conditions
> they insisted upon before dropping their case against Phil Zimmerman, a
> few years ago.

Um, try again.  PGP 5.x can read PGP 2.6 messages just fine, thank
you.  It can even generate them just fine.  I should know -- I wrote
that code.

The only thing that PGP 5.x would NOT do was generate a PGP
2.6-compatible key.  This means that to be compatible with PGP 2.6.2
you would have to generate your key on 2.6.2 and then move to PGP 5.x

This was _NOT_ done at the insistence of the FBI or NSA.  It was
actually done at the insistence of Phil Zimmermann who wanted PGP to
be patent free to keep out of RSA's hair.  It had nothing at all to do
with the DoJ case against Phil.

Please be sure to check your facts before you send out more FUD.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available