There wasn't any sign or promise in 2005 (that I'm aware of, and I had a key back then) that PGP would soon get meaningfully better, for example that it would suddenly, magically solve the issue of verifying keys in a decentralized system. It was a pain in the arse then as now. There has been some improvement in the meantime, in that keys.openpgp.org started unilaterally doing its own email verification.
And you say that it's been 18 years and PGP is behind best practices, but you don't describe how those best practices would better solve the package verification challenge that PyPi faces. So in the absence of an actual alternative system why not keep using PGP? Perfect is the enemy of good (IMO!).
But again, I'm not even really feeling strongly that PyPi should use PGP or not. I mostly posted just to say that they should be honest about why they are leaving it, and these seem like bad/misleading stats that for some reason they are hiding behind instead of coming out and saying they changed their mind about PGP (or new people are now running things and don't like dealing with PGP - many people would sympathize).
And you say that it's been 18 years and PGP is behind best practices, but you don't describe how those best practices would better solve the package verification challenge that PyPi faces. So in the absence of an actual alternative system why not keep using PGP? Perfect is the enemy of good (IMO!).
But again, I'm not even really feeling strongly that PyPi should use PGP or not. I mostly posted just to say that they should be honest about why they are leaving it, and these seem like bad/misleading stats that for some reason they are hiding behind instead of coming out and saying they changed their mind about PGP (or new people are now running things and don't like dealing with PGP - many people would sympathize).