Another Son of Clipper discussion paper

[Matthew Ghio]

Mike McNally (m5 at dev.tivoli.com) wrote:
: Lucky Green writes:
:  > Windows 95 is on a lot of people's hard drives. It is therefore public
:  > and available for every one's inspection.  How many people do you know
:  > that have reverse engineered Windows 95. How many of those use a
:  > reverse engineered version. I'd venture it is zero out of zero.
:
: Problems with this analogy:
:
: 1) Windows 95 is somewhat bigger than your typical encryption
: routine;
:
: 2) The factor of motivation isn't considered.

If one is motivated enough to want source code to their operating system,
then they are motivated enough to dump Windows and download Linux or BSD.
The only reason to reverse-engineer Windows 95 is to produce applications
which are able to interoperate with Windows software in an unintended
manner, and the only reason to want to do this (instead of writing a
version for an open platform) is because Windows is standard on many PCs.

The same applies to GAK.  There is no reason to hack it when you can just
use PGP instead.  The only reason to hack it would be if it became a
standard.  If we have to start hacking GAK applications, we've already
lost to a degree.  Thus our focus should be on making alternatives
available instead of just attacking GAK.  (Although I suppose you could
show how to hack it, for the sake of making a political statement.)