"--for-your-eyes-only"

[Charly Avital]

Werner Koch wrote the following on 6/29/05 10:36 AM:
> On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:55:02 +0200, Janusz A Urbanowicz said:
> 
> 
>>Some form of secure viewer was present in PGP 2.3 and 2.6 which were FLOSS.
> 
> 
> Huh, that's new to me.  Both versions are pure command line tools
> without a graphical part.  No way to make use fo filtered fonts.

Those two versions, for the Mac, were not pure command line tools. I
have no idea what they did for Windows users.

Version 2.3 of MacPGP was the first PGP port to the Mac. Not really a
Mac application, it worked somehow with a combination of minimalistic
GUI and command line essentials. It was a good starting point for Mac
users who wanted to learn about PGP. I started with that, and I remember
it was nerve-wracking (for me at least).

Version 2.6.3x (maybe it was called FatMacPGP 2.6.3, I am not sure) was
a quantum leap (sort of): it would run on PowerPC and also on 68020 and
68030 CPUs, and behaved like a real Mac application, with many GUI
niceties (or maybe not really a GUI, but some kind of front or shell),
but also with an option to use CLI. There was a feature called something
like "allow viewing by recipient only", but I don't remember whether it
was the secure viewer with TEMPEST resistant fonts, or a warning meant
for the recipient that the decrypted message would not be saved into a
file, and would only be displayed on the recipient's computer display.
The recipient could chose to abide by the warning, or to save the
decrypted message using some specific command or option.


> 
> I am not sure what kind of software you collect untder the term of
> FLOSS; if you mean Free Software, PGP has never been Free Software
> despite what many people claimed.

FLOSS = Free Libre Open Source Software.

PGP 2.x.x versions were free software (lower case, meaning free of
payment); Philip R. Zimmermann made PGP available for free (at the
beginning of PGP's career). Whether this qualifies for Free Software
(upper case), I don't know.

Charly