> The ad hoc, out of band nature of how PGP keys are trusted is not remotely new - PyPi would have known from the very start of adopting PGP that many keys would not be automatically verifiable. It makes little sense to turn around now and act like this is some surprising thing.
This is revisionist: in 2005, PGP was approachingly modern and represented an acceptable tradeoff between usability, legal and patent constraints, and arms laws. It was also accompanied by a network of synchronizing keyservers and a "strong set" within the Web of Trust that, in principle, gave you transitive authenticity for artifacts. That never really worked as expected, but it's all code and infrastructure that was actually running in 2005, when PyPI chose to allow PGP signatures.
None of that is the case in 2023: PGP is 20 years behind cryptographic best practices, and has 30 years of unresolved technical debt. There is no web of trust, and the synchronizing keyserver network has been broken for years.
The argument for PGP in 2005 was that it was, to a first approximation, the best that could be done. The argument against PGP in 2023 is that, to a first approximation, it's worse than useless by virtue of providing false security guarantees.
This is revisionist: in 2005, PGP was approachingly modern and represented an acceptable tradeoff between usability, legal and patent constraints, and arms laws. It was also accompanied by a network of synchronizing keyservers and a "strong set" within the Web of Trust that, in principle, gave you transitive authenticity for artifacts. That never really worked as expected, but it's all code and infrastructure that was actually running in 2005, when PyPI chose to allow PGP signatures.
None of that is the case in 2023: PGP is 20 years behind cryptographic best practices, and has 30 years of unresolved technical debt. There is no web of trust, and the synchronizing keyserver network has been broken for years.
The argument for PGP in 2005 was that it was, to a first approximation, the best that could be done. The argument against PGP in 2023 is that, to a first approximation, it's worse than useless by virtue of providing false security guarantees.