[Ambassadors] GPG and mail posting

Paul W. Frields stickster at gmail.com
Wed Jul 21 20:21:19 UTC 2010


On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 02:58:09PM +0000, Leonard Adjei wrote:
> > It would be difficult to encrypt a message on a list that could be read
> > by everyone because GPG is generally asynchronous encryption.  You could
> > all share a public/private key set which would work but that's an iffy
> > solution as well.
> 
> 
> 
> So it seems there's no way around it apart from individually sending
> to list users. But this may become more cumbersome when the lists
> expands and the subscribers become too many. I guess that would do for
> now.

We maintain public archives because the work that Fedora does is
supposed to be open and transparent.  That cannot be achieved with
encrypted email.  There is no need to encrypt most email for Fedora
Project use, because that makes it impossible for other people to see
what's going on, and thus reduces our openness.  There is, however,
some use in signing email, because that can *authenticate* a message
as coming from the author and no one else.

Sending private, encrypted email for normal Fedora work is not a good
substitute for talking to people openly on the discussion lists.  (In
fact, you can remove "encrypted" from that sentence, and it's still
just as true.)

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
          Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com



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