[arch-general] Thunderbird 78

Peter pufiad at gmail.com
Mon Nov 9 10:53:35 UTC 2020


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out-of-date version 68.12.0.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.


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