Network Associates Gives Up Search for PGP Buyer

nakhla writes: "I came across this article which states that Network Associates has given up the search for a buyer for its PGP division. The company has laid off 18 workers, and plans to continue to maintain the product for one year. It's a good thing that there are still products like GnuPG and others out there for people who need cheap, reliable encryption."

What difference will it make?

[maelstrom]

It's not like there is highspread usage of PGP/GPG anyway. I have been trying to use PGP ever since Phil Zimmerman was still coding on it himself, but I've never been able to convince any of my friends to use it often enough to make it useful.

I'm glad the option is there, and I know it's done a lot of good in a lot of places, but even using e-mail encryption automatically draws attention to yourself. It would be far better if everyone used it for every e-mail they sent. It would be great if keysigning and verification was a normal event in meatspace, but it just isn't to be. How is it that SSH and OpenSSH became so widespread but PGP and GPG haven't?

I think it's because PGP and GPG have such a sucky interface. It takes me forever to read the manual every time, and the integration with current mail programs sucks! Evolution seems to be fixing this and I know mutt and pine can support it, but it's just too much work to setup if no one else you e-mail can do it too!

Is there any hope? I'd like to think so, but only if it becomes the default in hotmail and MS Outlook will it become widespread, and what are the odds of that? *sigh*

Re:Lots of products left alright, but easy to use?

[pmsr]

Key management? Why all the fuss? Just send the attachment password by email! ;-)

/Pedro