Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!altnet!edc From: edc@ALTOS.COM (Eric Christensen) Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm Subject: Re: Crypt() in Elm - This may be a problem! Message-ID: <520@altnet.ALTOS.COM> Date: 27 Jun 88 09:50:08 GMT References: <470@altnet.ALTOS.COM> <278@clout.Jhereg.MN.ORG> <485@altnet.ALTOS.COM> <10291@ncc.Nexus.CA> <1060@datapg.DataPg.MN.ORG> Reply-To: edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric Christensen) Organization: Altos Computer Systems, San Jose, CA. Lines: 34 In article <10291@ncc.Nexus.CA> lyndon@ncc.nexus.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes: > >As far as I am concerned, if two people want to send each other encrypted >mail they should implement their own compatable (with each others) >crypt(1) replacement. I don't think encryption should be part of the UA. > I have to agree with Lyndon on this one. After evaluating several diferent ways to encrypt messages, I kept coming back to the same problem. Whatever we do for Elm will be incompatible with all other mail systems (few of which have any encryption at all). My proposed solution: remove the crypt option from Elm. Wait!!!! Don't flame me yet! Besides the compatability problems there is another concern here. It's very easy to add feature after feature to a package like Elm. This is fine up to a point, but when you start adding features that most people won't or can't use, you're not increasing the worth of the package at all. In fact, you may be decreasing it's worth, based on the fact that you're adding more code, which makes it harder to maintain and keep portable (can you sy 80286? :-). If nobody comes up with a real good reason to keep the crypt calls, I'm going to yank them (or at least ifdef them out). And I don't plan on spending any more time working on this issue. After all, there are "real" bugs to be fixed, and a release to get out. -- +-------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | Eric D. Christensen | Email: edc@altnet.altos.com (uunet!altnet!edc) | | Altos Computer Systems +---------------------------------------------------+ | 399 West Trimble Road | Definitions: Bug - An Undocumented Feature | | San Jose, Ca. 95131 | Feature - A Documented Bug | +-------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | These views aren't Altos' - They're mine, all mine, and you can't have them | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+