I was an engineer at PGP from 2004-2011 and ended up running the server team as lead engineer. I wouldn't disagree with most of the points brought up by the author, both the code base and standard has accreted over time and it's incredibly complex. There were only a couple of people on the team that really understood all the facets of either the OpenPGP or SMIME/x509 standards. It's made worse in that it was a hack on top of another system that had accreted over time (email) and that system was never intended to be secure. We had massive database of malformed or non-compliant emails from every email client since the beginning of time. The sub-packets that the author mentions were primarily used for dealing with forwarded chains of encrypted email messages where each previous message had it's own embedded mime-encoded encrypted/signed messages and attachments.
The problem is that no-one else has gone through the process of establishing a community/standard that's capable of replacing it. Each system has built their own inoperable walled garden that doesn't work with anyone else, and none of them have a user base large enough to make encryption easy and pervasive.
My own secret hope is that Apple is forced to open iMessage as a part of an anti-trust action and that acts as a catalyst for interoperability.
The problem is that no-one else has gone through the process of establishing a community/standard that's capable of replacing it. Each system has built their own inoperable walled garden that doesn't work with anyone else, and none of them have a user base large enough to make encryption easy and pervasive.
My own secret hope is that Apple is forced to open iMessage as a part of an anti-trust action and that acts as a catalyst for interoperability.