At 3:55 PM 12/17/94, Nathaniel Borenstein wrote: [...]

Well, mostly because we're leading for commerce, and we can't lead for everything. Trying to do too many things at once often causes you not to succed at any of them. We do, however, put our money where our mouth is when we say that we believe in the importance of universal access to cryptography -- that's why, even as a startup, we are a significant sponsor of Phil Zimmerman's ongoing work. (We paid for the development of a PGP-encrypted telnet, which will be publicly available soon if it isn't already, and we send monthly checks in support of work related to the development of PGP 3.0.) [...] So if we've been unclear, let me try once more to be crystal clear:

1. Cryptography is a Good Thing.

2. Universal access to cryptography is critical to the future of human freedom.

Hmm. Does everyone that previously flamed the hell out of First Virtual feel kind of stupid now? Dont' get me wrong, I don't have anything wrong with discussing the limitations of First Virtuals protocols or software on the list, that's what the list is for. But it seems kind of counter productive to be viciously flaming people like First Virtual and Mosaic, especially when both have said that they remain committed to cryptography. Heck, if they hadn't said this, it would probably be even more important not to flame them, cause we'd want to convince them to change they're minds. And being rude rarely convinced anyone of anything. I'm just issuing a plea that people try to be a bit less rude on the list in the future, especially with Real Live Commercial Developers. Not that commercial developers are better then the rest of us, but I'm sure we all agree that it would be really nice if commercial software supported strong crypto, and it's really important to get commercial developers to do so. If some of them are listening in on the list, it seems a good opportunity to try to rationally and reasonably explain why crypto is good (if not neccesary, as FV claims), and what sorts of crypto are strong enough and well suited for their applications. Without calling them names.