Project barriers (was Re: Self-Introduction: Chris Savage)

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 11:29 +0100, Stuart Ellis wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 13:27 -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote: 
> > > Click-throughs are passive, people can do them without thought.  The
> > > sign-the-CLA-with-GPG is active.
> > 
> > But I agree that GPG signing emails is just frills compared with the
> > CLA.  No reason people should go through that pain if they don't care.
> > I've been using PGP/GPG so long that I don't, but it's obviously a
> > significant barrier to some people, and since it's not necessary outside
> > the CLA, we should remove or demote it like you said.  My ~$0.02.
> 
> FWIW, when I wrote that line I had a couple of things in mind: 
> 
> 1) Since in practice you need a GPG key and a Linux box to contribute,
> and the default GNOME mail client (Evolution) enables GPG with one
> setting, signed e-mail is almost free (I thought). Kmail has GPG support
> as well, I believe.

Yes, those are both low-drag apps as far as GPG goes.

> 2) Doing the Right Thing: without some kind of signature, an e-mail just
> isn't trustworthy, even though most people do assume the "From:" field
> can be trusted. Which is slightly worrying, and something that I have to
> explain semi-regularly as people receive infected or phish mails. With a
> project like this, where contributors often only interact through IRC
> and e-mail, signed mail is particularly valuable IMO.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer GPG, I just don't want it to be a sticking
point for new contributors.

> Of course I hadn't looked at Thunderbird... It appears that the versions
> of Enigmail provided by the developer are often incompatible with
> Thunderbird builds provided by Fedora, and there isn't a package in the
> Fedora repositories for Enigmail.

I looked into this too and discovered the same thing.  I wonder why no
one has packaged it, seeing as how it's so useful?  Anyone interested in
doing so?

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
 Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
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