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Why to use GnuPG and not PGP.
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* PGP 2 is nearly Free Software but encumbered by the IDEA patent.
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* PGP 2 is old, hard to maintain and limited to one set of
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encryption algorithms (RSA + IDEA)
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* PGP 2 is not a GNU or Unix Program and threfore not easy to use in
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* PGP 2 has a couple of minor security flaws
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* PGP 5 and 6 are more or less OpenPGP conform but proprietray
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software. Source code is available but there is no way to be sure
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that the distributed binary versions do match the source code.
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Parts of the source code are not published. It is illegal to
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build versions of PGP from source and distribute them (IIRC, there
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is an exception for private users).
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* PGP 5 and 6 are not fullty OpenPGP compliant
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* PGP 7 is claimed to be OpenPGP compliant but the source code is
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not anymore published.
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* At least versions before 6.5.8 had severe coding bugs. We don't
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* PGP 5, 6 and 7 implement complicated methods for key recovering in
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corporate environments. Although this is not a hidden feature,
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this leads to more code and bugs.
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* NAI as the vendor of PGP seems to be a major government contractor.
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* Given the history of known backdoors in other proprietary software
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(e.g. Lotus Notes), some folks claim that there might also be
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backdoors in PGP 5, 6 and 7. Now there are even more rumors after
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Phil Zimmermann left NAI.
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* GnuPG is Free Software under the GNU GPL. It does not use
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* Everyone is able to scrutinize the source code, build, distribute
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and use versions of his own or from a trusted party he chooses.
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* The build environment is also Free Software and therefore less
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likely tampered with malicious code. The exception here is the MS
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Windows version of GnuPG where the OS is proprietary. The binary
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version however is build using an entirely Free Software OS and
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toolchain (cross-platfrom development under GNU/Linux).
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* Security fixes are provided very fast.
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* GnuPG is a standard tool in all GNU/Linux systems and used in many
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different environments.
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* GnuPG gives reasonable messages and not just "Error encrypting".
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* GnuPG supports most of the optional features of the OpenPGP standard.
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* GnuPG comes with internationalization support for 16 languages.
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* Graphical frontends are available and they divert the task of
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the actual cryptographic operations to GnuPG as a specialized tool
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for this. A library called GPGME is available which makes
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interfacing of GnuPG with other programs quite easy.
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* GnuPG is available for all GNU and Unix platforms as well as for
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all MS Windows Operating systems. Porting to VMS, MAC OSX and
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OS/2 is nearly finished.
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contrib/why-gnupg
