About usability of security software
About usability of security software
Posted Sep 12, 2020 9:23 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566)In reply to: About usability of security software by ber
Parent article: GnuPG 2.2.23 released, fixing a critical security flaw
This is what I guess causes most of the complaints:
> ~ $ gpg --<tab><tab>
>Display all 397 possibilities? (y or n)
> ~ $ gpg --<tab><tab>
>Display all 397 possibilities? (y or n)
GnuPG is cathedral software: it requires dedication and knowledge investment/upkeep to understand and use effectively, or else you have to trust someone else to get all that right and abstract it away out of sight for you (leading to horrors like Keybase), with no in-between.
Most other CLI tools that try to cover as much ground (see most VCSes, build systems, graphicsmagick, openssl) shape their user interface into tiers of binaries or subcommands, so that users can tune out the parts they don't need to get things done. Maybe if gpg had something more like those it would see higher usage.