I am very well aware of the criticisms against PGP-as-a-model and I actually agree with them. The premise that having an open protocol makes changes 10x harder to actually spread is very true. I still believe that it's better to have that than everyone doing the same thing over and over and over again, "but this time it's better".
HTTP, javascript and TLS have also shown that a sufficiently motivated set of actors can move the ecosystem forward. True, organizing the ecosystem is not the same job as actually building stuff, but it's still beneficial to all of us.
> HTTP, javascript and TLS have also shown that a sufficiently motivated set of actors can move the ecosystem forward.
Absolutely. PGP could be decent. Unfortunately efail and sks[1] show it's actors aren't sufficiently motivated.
[1] https://gist.github.com/rjhansen/f716c3ff4a7068b50f2d8896e54...
Here's a good quote from the article at the top of this chain:
> Take AEAD ciphers: the Rust-language Sequoia PGP defaulted to the AES-EAX AEAD mode, which is great, and nobody can read those messages because most PGP installs don’t know what EAX mode is, which is not great. Every well-known bad cryptosystem eventually sprouts an RFC extension that supports curves or AEAD, so that its proponents can claim on message boards that they support modern cryptography. RFC’s don’t matter: only the installed base does. We’ve understood authenticated encryption for 2 decades, and PGP is old enough to buy me drinks; enough excuses.
> You can have backwards compatibility with the 1990s or you can have sound cryptography; you can’t have both.