Re: S/MIME with OpenSSL?

[Adam Sjøgren]

Uwe writes:

> This is not about impose, this is about practical matter.

Sure. My point is that I don't want to tell people how to handle their
email.

> Suppose you want to interchange confidential information with someone
> outside the GNU/emacs world and that person has very little computer
> knowledge. For him/her pgp is a nightmare to install. Smime not.

I understand that this is how you feel. You haven't convinced me this is
the case. You just keep stating that it is.

>    >> operations                S/MIME                 PGP                
>    >> Inst of software          no; included           yes                
>
>    > I think you have some hidden assumptions about what software is used
>    > here? Don't both S/MIME and PGP use external tools in Gnus?

> I am speaking here about software in general, almost all mail programs,
> thunderbird, evolution, kmail, outlook, whatever have smime support

I see. I have never heard of anyone (but you) using S/MIME with any of
these programs.

>    > This seems to be a negative for S/MIME: it is easy to generate a PGP
>    > key. How do you generate an S/MIME certificate?

> It is not easy to generate a pgp for an illiterate, trust me. You can
> generate a S/MIME certificate, but it will be self signed and therefore
> useless, most clients would refuse a message from someone with a self
> signed certificate. So you apply for certifcate which is signed by a
> root authority, in one of the dozen services like commodo, they provide
> with a class 1[1] certificate for one year.[2]

So, in my eyes, PGP is much easier here. I don't even know how to tell
someone to "apply for a certificate signed by a root authority", much
less how to get the certificate into their chosen email-program. But
every "illiterate" computer user knows this?

>    > I've set up Gnus/GnuPG to automatically fetch keys for every person I
>    > see a signature from, so there is nothing manual for me to do here.
>
> Again this is not as trivial as you think. An my fetch you mean from a
> keyserver where that person has uploaded his key I presume.

It is literally one line of configuration. Much easier than "applying
for a certificate signed by a root authority" - what so-called
"illiterate" person even knows what those words mean, much less how to
do it?

Oh, and, ooops, that's exactly what you say the problem with creating a
PGP key is.

Maybe we should wrap this up, as both are, as far as I know, equally
supported by Gnus, and so this is wandering off topic.


  Best regards,

    Adam

-- 
 "Lef ma nine imma Jeep"                                      Adam Sjøgren
                                                         asjo@koldfront.dk