Re: [Evolution] Fetch PGP Public keys from LDAP?

[David Burleigh <david burleigh gmx com>]

On Thu, 2017-12-07 at 09:08 -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

> On Wed, 2017-12-06 at 18:32 -0500, David Burleigh wrote:
> > What I'm really after is away to simplify and nearly automate the use
> > of pgp encryption for emails within our organization. Already we have
> > the robust mail clients like Evolution, Thunderbird, and Outlook (for
> > Windows users) access our common LDAP service for our organizational
> > contacts, so it would be convenient to have everyone's public key
> > hosted there also, and automatically used to encrypt mail to them.
>
>
> [again: ~26+ years experience]
>
> We used to do the same - use LDAP as a contacts backend between diverse
> clients.  The problem is that such a solution is a potent example of
> LDC (least common denominator) behavior.  Beyond very basic
> functionality like name-and-email you can't get much; you certainly
> will not be able to get all the clients to inter-operate getting
> encryption keys from the addressbook - it just isn't going to happen.
>  I know, when you set it up it seems like you are 99.44% of the way
> there to a good collaboration solution [essentially what we used to
> call "groupware"] - but that 0.56% is a big deal - and LDAP cannot
> deliver it.  
>
> See a very old presentation of mine - http://www.wmmi.net/documents/LDA
> P105.pdf - concerning how even the basic schema used by Evolution,
> Thunderbird, and WAB [Outlook] don't match up across clients. :(
>
> Any notion that 'the world' would settle on a standard LDAP schema, and
> any notion that 'the world' had a genuine interest in real inter-
> operability, is now dusty history.   Hyper-proprietary "cloud" services
> [called them "SaaS" back when I was wee lad] have crushed any momentum
> that existed concerning standards; or at least any standards that don't
> suit their purposes.
>
> You get closest to what you want using a WebDAV (CardDAV) server.  
> Even then advanced features like key sharing are iffy.
>
> There are very pragmatic reasons that, eventually, almost all
> organizations standardize on a specific client.
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Sigh... That is certainly true about trying to find a solution that works for diverse clients. Well, perhaps if we can get everyone to switch to Linux, then we can make Evolution our common email client, but that's a big undertaking in itself...