6 June 1996
Source: Mail list cypherpunks@toad.com

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    Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:13:47 -0700
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    From: Dave Del Torto <ddt@pgp.com>
    Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Phil Zimmermann on recent FUD and PGP 5.0 plans
    Cc: Mike Nelson <mnelson@pgp.com>

    A message from our Fearless Leader...

       dave

    ................................. cut here .................................

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

    Last month, Pretty Good Privacy Inc went through a  reorganization in
    its top management.  We were spending too much money, too fast.  Tom
    Steding was replaced by Phil Dunkelberger as the president of PGP, and
    I handed over the chairman title to Jonathan Seybold, who had been, with
    me, the original cofounder of the company.  Jonathan is devoting his time
    to the business side of things, while I am focussing my attention on my
    role as chief technology officer.

    I have seen some speculation in some usenet newsgroups that these changes
    were in some way connected with the fact that PGP was recently sued by RSA
    Data Security over some dispute regarding royalties for use of the RSA
    patent, which PGP holds a license to.  Let me set the record straight
    on this.  There are sound business reasons why this shuffling of top
    management occurred at PGP, and these reasons are known to all of our
    employees.  The RSA lawsuit against PGP is absolutely not one of the
    reasons, not even remotely.  I don't think shuffling top management is
    a likely reaction for any company to take in response to a lawsuit, even
    if the lawsuit had merit, which this one does not.  We fully expect the
    RSA matter to be resolved in arbitration proceedings, in our favor.

    I know that it is common practice for some companies to issue statements
    to "spin" the story about certain events, sometimes at the expense of
    truth.  This makes a lot of people understandably skeptical about such
    explanations.  I do have responsibilities toward my company, but no
    one could get me to deny a truth about the reasons for the restructuring.
    The truth is, the restructuring had absolutely nothing at all to do with
    the RSA lawsuit.

    I would now like to announce that we will be releasing PGP 5.0 in mid-June.
    It's in beta release right now on our web page (www.pgp.com).  In keeping
    with my own dedication to personal freedom and privacy, we will be releasing
    a freeware version for noncommercial use through MIT's web site
    (web.mit.edu/pgp), just like in the old days before the company was formed.
    And we do plan to publish the full PGP source code for Mac, Windows 95,
    and Linux.

    There are a lot of new exciting features, including automatic key lookups
    from remote key servers on the Internet, which will likely result in the
    rapid growth of a ready-made nationwide PGP public-key infrastructure,
    on an unprecedented scale.  We are also encouraging the migration to new
    public key algorithms in addition to RSA, namely the NIST Digital
    Signature Standard (DSS), as well as Diffie-Hellman (Elgamal) keys.
    We expect most of the new users to be using these new algorithms instead
    of RSA, in part because they offer new features, better performance, and
    better security for the same key sizes.  I hope that you will all join me
    in this opportunity to move to these new algorithms, allowing everyone to
    finally enjoy the use of public key cryptography without the encumberances
    of patents.

    Philip Zimmermann
    Chief Technology Officer, PGP Inc.

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    [End]