Hello,

Thunderbird allows you to use GnuPG for private key operations if you can’t/don’t want to import your private key into Thunderbird. This is a feature lot of us need, because if you use a smartcard-like hardware solution (Yubikey, Nitrokey, any PGP smartcard…) that’s the only solution (since you cannot import your private key into Thunderbird). Thunderbird calls this the “external GnuPG feature”: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:OpenPGP:Smartcards Thank you for the information. Alright! Thunderbird does have a fallback for GnuPG.

Please correct me if I'm wrong: currently everybody that uses Thunderbird, whether they have a need for GnuPG or not, is stuck with an out-of-date version 68.12.0. I'm using Archlinux for many years and normally Archlinux updates packages as they are released. If some people cannot use the latest version for whatever reason, they are free to add the package to IgnorePkg in their /etc/pacman.conf. Now, I understand that it must be sour if the package maintainer himself/herself has to do that, but it does not seem right what is happening now. To avoid that the discussion goes about whether there are "a lot" or "a few" or how many there are that have a need for GnuPG, please consider whether it is worth to avoid shipping (security) updates. Peter.