Subject: [openpgp] keyserver protocol

From: Jesus Cea <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:14:38 +0100

Hi, everybody.

I have been following SKS mailing lists for years and I wonder how can
OpenPGP rely on an undocumented protocol, with only a single codebase
written in a unusual language for something so paramount as keyservers
and key distribution :-).

http://minsky-primus.homeip.net/sks/

I don't have a bad eye for SKS. I think it covers a badly needed need
and it is not its fault if there is no competition. I read the master
thesis that was seminal writing for this project, but the exact
protocol is not documented and must be digged from the sourcecode...
written in Ocaml :-).

I am really uncomfy with this situation, and I wonder if I am
overreacting, or people are not actually aware of this "monoculture"
and lack of interoperativity...

Please, consider this *NOT* an attack to SKS (thanks god we have it!)
but a heads up to think about it.

- -- 
Jesús Cea Avión                         _/_/      _/_/_/        _/_/_/
[email-masked] - http://www.jcea.es/     _/_/    _/_/  _/_/    _/_/  _/_/
jabber / xmpp:[email-masked]         _/_/    _/_/          _/_/_/_/_/
.                              _/_/  _/_/    _/_/          _/_/  _/_/
"Things are not so easy"      _/_/  _/_/    _/_/  _/_/    _/_/  _/_/
"My name is Dump, Core Dump"   _/_/_/        _/_/_/      _/_/  _/_/
"El amor es poner tu felicidad en la felicidad de otro" - Leibniz

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From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 17:53:15 -0500

> http://minsky-primus.homeip.net/sks/

I actually wrote this up at one point as an informational draft, but for one reason or another didn't finish submitting it.  If there is interest, I can clean it up and submit:

  http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp-00.txt

David

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From: Daniel Kahn Gillmor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:29:01 -0500

>   http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp-00.txt

I'd be interested in seeing the HKP draft revised, especially since
modern use seems to have diverged from that draft a bit.

It seems like Jesus might be more concerned about the SKS gossip
protocol, which is even more poorly-documented than HKP.

Jesus, i suspect that [email-masked] is the best place to discuss
the gossip protocol.  It's a known issue that it is poorly-documented
(no one is happy about it, including Yaron Minsky, the lead author of
SKS), and there is at least one other project that has been discussed on
that list that is trying to make a compatible/interoperable
implementation in go:

 https://launchpad.net/hockeypuck

It's a work in progress, and i'm sure any help would be appreciated.

Regards,

	--dkg