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Re: [openpgp] keyserver protocol

Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> Tue, 07 May 2013 15:11 UTC

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From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>
To: David Shaw <dshaw@jabberwocky.com>
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Subject: Re: [openpgp] keyserver protocol
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On Thu 2013-01-03 17:53:15 -0500, David Shaw wrote:

> I actually wrote this up at one point as an informational draft, but
> for one reason or another didn't finish submitting it.  If there is
> interest, I can clean it up and submit:
>
>   http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp-00.txt

David, i would like to see this picked back up if possible.  Is there a
way that i can help?

In particular, I would like to see the error signalling and semantics be
more clearly and explicitly defined, so that (for example) when a
keyserver has a problem the user agents (e.g. client tools like gpg
--refresh) have a clear way to distinguish between cases like:

 0) "I have no key material matching this name/keyid at all"

 1) "I have too many keys that match this search to bother you with an
     insanely long list"

 2) "something is broken in my database, and I'm confused"

and so forth.

Any thoughts on what would be reasonable next steps?

Regards

    --dkg

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