GnuPG 2.4.4 still using legacy packets?

[Andrew Gallagher]

On 12 Nov 2025, at 19:10, Robert J. Hansen via Gnupg-users <gnupg-users at gnupg.org> wrote:
> 
> This exact thing is happening with the obsolescent IPv4 format.

I don’t think this is a useful comparison - ipv4 and ipv6 are separate stacks that have to operate in parallel for a long period of time, and we’re not yet at the stage where every single device and network on the internet is ipv6-capable. OpenPGP passed the equivalent stage on the tech adoption timeline somewhere around 2005 or 2006, before RFC4880 introduced packet types that were incompatible with the old framing (e.g. MDC). Aside from network management tools, there are no broadly-supported protocols that have a hard requirement for ipv6 - because entire networks and countless devices still have to be upgraded (at great expense). Whereas we could stop emitting the legacy framing at any time and few people outside this list would even notice… ;-)

A