On 21/05/2018 15:17, Mark H. Wood wrote: >> Break backwards compatibility already: it’s time. Ignore the haters. I >> trust you. > (I understand that that's a quote of a discussion-opener from the write-up.) > > I'd like to first see how many haters can be won over by selling the > necessary changes. > > By "selling" I mean addressing the concerns of those who aren't > convinced that they want something: > > o Why this is important *to you*, even though its importance was not > immediately obvious.
To my mind it is at the outset counter-productive to refer to "haters". To use the term "haters" implies that anyone who does not share one's own view is somehow wrong and/or that their arguments can potentially be dismissed on the grounds or emotionalism rather than rationality. In practice, those like myself who recognise that the ability to decrypt legacy-encrypted data is a basic requirement for many users with archival needs do not "hate" anything. We just recognise that decryption of legacy-encrypted data is a real world requirement right now and will continue to be for many years, and so I think it is right and proper for this project to continue to support this activity with maintained software (albeit with a requirement for users to make some changes to support such activity). > o What we have done, and are doing, to keep *your* cost down. If the aim is to keep end-users' costs down then do not completely remove legacy features that are still needed in the real world. Decryption of legacy-encrypted data is one of those features, like it or not. > o What else would we need to do, to make this something *you* want? Go back in time and change history! What is now archived is archived and cannot be changed. Like it or not, it will need to be decrypted for a very long time to come. Ideally this should be achievable with maintained, current-version software. By all means, if that software needs to be a special-use, decrypt-only, program that is hardly ever updated except to patch code vulnerabilities then so be it. But do not throw your long-time users or their data under the bus for the sake of eliminating backwards compatibility. Stability and compatibility really do matter to many classes of users. -- Mark Rousell
_______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users