Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down

[Tim May]

On Monday, June 2, 2003, at 07:09  AM, Ian Grigg wrote:
>

> PGP was also mildly successful, and was done by
> one guy, PRZ.  The vision was very clear.  All others
> had to do was to fix the bugs...  Sadly, free versions
> never quite made the jump into GUI mail clients, so
> widespread success was denied to it.
>

I would've characterized PGP version 2, 1992, as the first usable 
version. And it was done by about half a dozen people. The first 
version was not, to my knowledge, actually used by anyone.

It might have done better had creaping featuritus and the "integration 
with mailers and other programs" and the "better GUI" distractions not 
dissipated so much energy.

Also, the Clipper chip politics and the belief that PRZ was about to be 
arrested gave PGP a certain kind of notoriety...it became "cool" 
("bad," "def") to use PGP.

These days, "that's _so_ 90s."

--Tim May