Re: S/MIME wins

[Andrew Bromage <bromage@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day all.

Lutz Donnerhacke wrote:

> "(...)
> Among U.S. campanies, momentum is building in favor of S/MIME. Both
> Microsoft and Netscape Communications have S/MIME clients and Lotus and
> Novell have announced support for S/MIME. Only Qualcomm Inc., maker of
> the Eudora E-mail client, supports PGP/MIME.

Let's not forget that if we move quickly, there could well be at least
one other PGP/MIME client: Netscape Communicator 5.x.  The timing of
the source release could be fortuitous for the Open PGP community.

> Both groups had agreed to submit
> their final drafts next month, but it is unlikely the PGP group can
> finish.

I think that a worse outcome than this working group not finishing on
time is this working group engaging in a firefighting effort and ending
up with an inferior standard.

Also ask yourself if anyone would go to the same effort over S/MIME as
the PGPi group did with PGP 5.0 (with scanning and proofreading etc).
This suggests that PGP/MIME may well be the only interoperable strong
crypto system for your email available world-wide, which has to be a
point in its favour.

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage