Re: Armour

[David Hayes <david.hayes@xxxxxxx>]

At 08:07 AM 11/24/97 +0000, Ian Grigg wrote:
>1.  Is this WG happy to take as a given, or a working assumption, or a
>fundamental position (pick your own term), that the compatibility with
>the installed base is lost?

There is a tendancy to assume that there will be an unbridgable rift
between OP and pre-standard Classic PGP (2.6, Viacrypt 4, PGP Inc 5.x).
This is not so, and is unlikely ever to be so. 

It is misleading to speak of compatibility "being lost". It _may_ be
forgone by some implementations, which choose not to implement RSA/IDEA.
They are still documented, for those who wish to use them. 

Compatibility with Classic PGP has become optional. All OP implementations
will be compatible with each other. I suspect most will also be compatible
with the Classic PGP, but that's up to implementers and users. 

It is true that a de-minimis implementation of OP will not be compatible
with old PGP. 

--
David Hayes                                       David.Hayes@xxxxxxx
Switch Systems Engineering                        voice: 972-918-7236
MCI Communications, Inc.                               VNET: 777-7236
--If these thoughts were MCI's official opinions, the line above would
--read "MCI - Law & Public Policy Department".