Re: [saag] post-X509 cryptographic identities

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

Derek Atkins <[e-mail]> wrote:
    > My personal opinion is that it was neither a technical issue nor an
    > implementation issue that caused the market to choose X509 vs OpenPGP, but
    > rather a philosophical issue (or perhaps business-money-making
    > choices).

I'm not actually trying suggesting that they served the same purpose.
X509 encrypted email (SMIME) is astonishingly rare, despite hundreds of
millions being spent within Governments deploying things.  It's important to
understand if there were technical decisions that resulted in market failures.

    > On the other hand, if we're going to rehash the design requirements for
    > X.509, I think it makes sense to also rehash the differences in
    > requirements for SPKI and OpenPGP (and maybe even DNSSec).  Specifically,
    > it's important to discuss how they differed, but also in what ways they
    > overlapped.  I do agree we don't need to go into the full history of all
    > of them (including X.509).

What I want to understand is: are we living with technical decisions that
made sense at the time, but which are now resulting in pain?

--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-