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From the GnuPG prospective RFC-9580 is a deliberate fork away from what agreement could be achieved. Basically the faction that is now called RFC-9580 (mostly Sequoia and Proton) wanted to make a lot of changes to the existing standard but the faction that is now called LibrePGP (mostly GnuPG and RNP) was not convinced that those changes were necessary.

Traditionally the OpenPGP standards process has been very conservative and minimalistic. GnuPG comes from that tradition. So the RFC-9580 faction created their own maximalist version of the standard and are actively promoting it as the standard.

So from a user perspective, there are two incompatible proposals out there. It's a mess. So it is better to aggressively ignore them both and maintain interoperability by sticking with RFC-4880 (OpenPGP). That might be a problem if you for some reason are still concerned about a quantum attack against cryptography as the post quantum stuff has gotten caught in this schism. It is certainly something that the users need to keep in mind.

by throw0101a2 hours ago|

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> […] and are actively promoting it as the standard.

Well:

> Category: Standards Track

* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9580

by upofadown1 hours ago|

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It is very hard to prevent a proposal from becoming a RFC. You have to generate ongoing opposition for longer than the supporters. FWIW, here is the LibrePGP proposal:

* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-koch-librepgp/

Observing the OpenPGP schism mess I think I have gained some insight as to why some RFCs become so bloated. For example it has been recently pointed out that there are 60 RFCs for TLS (with 31 drafts in progress)[1]. The RFC process seems to be more optimal during the design phase. Once we have an established standard there should to be some way to force those that propose changes/extensions to provide appropriately strong justifications for those changes/extensions. Right now it is a popularity contest and there will always be more people out there in favour of changes/extensions than those willing to endlessly fight against those changes/extensions. Because cryptography is so specialized and obscure, the users tend to get left out of the discussion.

[1] https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/bollocks.pdf

by tovej1 hours ago|

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It is a standard proposal, which is why it's in the standards track. The point was that it is not the only (the) standard, and not the universally accepted one.

by capitol_4 hours ago|

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As far as I understood it: GnuPG started to implement stuff from the standard before it was finished, the standard continued to improve and GnuPG refused to change code already written.

Combined with some personal drama.

by em-bee2 hours ago|

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it's not that simple. the new standard is a complete rewrite of the old one. they are not even compatible anymore. things the old standard used to support are not supported in the new standard. that makes any implementation of the new standard incompatible with implementations of the old one. GnuPG simply refused to stop supporting the old standard and decided to fork the standard itself. on the personal drama my interpretation is that it resulted from people backing the new standard being unhappy that GnuPG didn't go along.

my opinion is that rewriting standards like that is the result of design by committee. everyone wants to put their mark on it. designing a new standard is fine, but the new standard should have also received a new name, or it should at least have been acknowledged that the old standard still needs to be supported until enough time has passed that the old standard is no longer in use. (which could take decades if not more if we want to be realistic and consider that encrypted data at rest could linger around pretty much forever unless actively re-encoded.)

(source: i talked to a GnuPG developer)