Libraries! Partial Solution to PGP Windows Wars and Source Code

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

[There's been a major flame war on pgp-users about the lack of Win3.1 
support, and more than a few cypherpunks have asked about source.]

PGP has always had a policy of making the source code available;
it was one of the big things that let us trust it.
PGP has also been available under a variety of platforms,
whether written/ported by Phil and associates, or ported by others.

Recently, PGP Inc. has come out with several major systems, including
- PGP 3.0 and 3.0.1 pre-alpha code, including libraries,
	which have been published in book form and on the net.
	For portability and compatibility, the most important things
	are the algorithms and file formats used.
- PGP 5.0 with fancy user interface for Win32 only.

I'm assuming that PGP 5.0 is written using the PGP 3.0.1 libraries* -
if they've got any sense, they've used the same libraries with at
most some bug fixes and/or simple new features that they can put out as 
a point release, and limited the Win32-related stuff to GUIs,
interfaces to other Windows programs, and similar non-portable stuff,
some of which can be bullied into working on DOS or Win16
and some of which is too much trouble to crowbar in.
If so, then *you* can do your own GUI work on Win16, MacOS 6, and OS/360,
and be sure of interoperability with Fancy New PGP.
In particular, the user-friendliness front-end programs like pgpclip 
and Private Idaho can use the libraries instead of having to 
pop up DOS subsystems to run.  (PI was very nice with ViaCrypt 2.7.1,
which let everything run as communicating Windows programs.)

Using the libraries also helps us trust the security -
it doesn't mean the GUIware doesn't also send a copy of your passphrase
to aldrich@nsavax.us, but it does let you build interoperable code you
can trust, and it makes it easier to verify that at least the
basic crypto routines are solid.

[* Perhaps I'm naive, and I must confess to not finishing all 
4 volumes of code, but I'd _hope_ they did the right thing...]






#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)