Re: lisp/url/url-https.el

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, address@hidden wrote:

>     I think Kim was actually trying to emphasis the absurdity
>     of removing ssl support code from Emacs in the first place, 
> 
> I agree that these restrictions are absurd.  However, that is
> not relevant to the issue of what we need to remove from
> distribution in the US.

Richard,

I need to mention that my own attempts at writing encryption support
for Gnus, which is to be included with Emacs, were frustrated by these
restrictions.  Specifically in the case of Gnus, the file ~/.authinfo
(AKA ~/.netrc) can hold user passwords, and encrypting it is very
desirable.  The restrictions have delayed production-ready encryption
code I've already written that wraps around GPG, and I am confused as
to how much of the code I have to throw out.

I am willing to work with any standards Emacs has, but there has to be
some way to allow a willing user to plug in encryption code easily
into Gnus, once that code is downloaded.  As it is, and according to
what you have told Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen and he has relayed to the
Gnus developers, not even empty wrapper functions that could be used
for encryption are allowed.  That makes my life much harder.

The alternate way is to develop two branches of Gnus, one for
inclusion with Emacs and one for regular use.  That can be very
counterproductive.

Can you suggest any way out of this situation?  Have I misunderstood
anything?

Thanks
Ted