Post #2814561

2026-04-25 06:30 UTC

@hko@floss.social Wait, "proprietary format"? #GnuPG is #FreeSoftware, so even if it use an original format, how can it qualified as "proprietary"? Any patent? Some dynamic linking trick? Also, did you asked the authors about their choices? In the past, I've seen lot of politics around (against) gnupg, and whenever I got deeper, I've found their reason rock-solid from a technical/security perspective (even for retrocompatibility support).

Replies (2)

@andrewg@mastodon.ie 2026-04-25 08:13

@giacomo @hko@floss.social GnuPG is not proprietary, of course. But the “librepgp” formats that it promotes as an alternative to OpenPGP are “proprietary” in the sense that they are the work of a single person, who happens to be the GnuPG project lead, and have been rushed into production against the advice of nearly every other openpgp implementer.

Open ##2814562
@hko@floss.social 2026-04-25 08:25

@giacomo I mean that GnuPG's new, non-OpenPGP formats are "proprietary in the governance sense": One actor unilaterally decides what they want to do, while not meaningfully engaging with anyone else. Then they implement their preference, and write up some document that more or less describes the format. Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

Open ##2814564