A schism in the OpenPGP world

Most likely most downstreams have not yet substantially adopted either standard. Below is what I found after a brief search through the above sources, project webpages and other sources.

  • Proton Mail: involved in crypto refresh; uses and maintains OpenPGP.js
  • Thunderbird: uses RNP but is freezing implementation of new OpenPGP features
  • Mailvelope: ?
  • OpenKeychain: ?
  • GnuPG: involved in LibrePGP
  • Hockeypuck: the draft standard for OpenPGP keyservers has some support for v6 keys but imposes limits in consideration of clients that do not support v6 keys
  • keys.openpgp.org: its governance board includes people from Proton and Sequoia
  • OpenPGP.js: supports crypto refresh; maintained by Proton Mail
  • RNP: openly supports LibrePGP
  • Sequoia PGP: involved in crypto refresh

I found this article by a keyserver operator that discusses technical differences, describes the conflict as personal rather than technical, and proposes a way forward that hopes to achieve harmony between v5 and v6.

Yes, some implementations do their own quirky things, others simply don’t implement OpenPGP in full.

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