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requirement of "hkp" URL scheme misguided
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Description

Release: 1.4.1

Description

The use, encouragement, and moreover requirement of a custom URL scheme "hkp" for keyservers is misguided. Since the keyserver interface is implemented entirely over HTTP, it should use the "http" or "https" scheme. In the past I could ignore this nonsense, as gpg would happily accept the "http" scheme. But at some point it began demanding that keyserver URL's have the "hkp" scheme. This is misguided because it prevents the exact same URL which is given to gpg as a keyserver to be given to a browser or anything else which understands HTTP. Most keyservers will rightly return an HTML form when you do a GET on the keyserver URL.

Fix

Accept the http URL scheme for keyservers once more, and discourage use of the hkp scheme.

Event Timeline

hkp and http are in fact two different and incompatible
schemes. If you wish to discuss this, please take it to the
gnupg-users or gnupg-devel mailing lists.