On Jun 22, 2010, at 10:09 PM, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote: > The FAQ for IDEA states that "The official GnuPG distribution does not > contain IDEA due to a patent restriction. The patent does not expire before > 2007 so don't expect official support before then." > > (http://gnupg.org/documentation/faqs.en.html#q3.3) > > Is this very old and it's now supported? Or is it still not in for some > other reason (either oversight, legal, or other).
I'm not sure about the 2007 patent expiration - I recall it being right around now, actually (2010-2011). In any event, it's mostly not supported. IDEA in OpenPGP is a funny thing - it sort of missed its useful window because of the patent stuff. PGP 2.x used it, but when things went to OpenPGP, 3DES was used instead, and IDEA was downgraded to a SHOULD implement in the first OpenPGP spec, and then downgraded further to a MAY implement in the revised spec. Time moved on, and better ciphers became available, so these days even though the patent is expiring, there isn't really a use for IDEA outside of interoperating with users of PGP 2.x. I'd be surprised to see much PGP 2.x usage these days. OpenPGP even explicitly rejects making new PGP 2.x-style keys. David _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
