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Bits from keyring-maint [action required]



A potential issue in the DFSG freeness of the Debian keyrings has been
brought to the attention of the keyring-maint team. We have already had
a similar issue[0] in the past with OpenPGP User Attributes (commonly
used to attach images to keys). This was resolved by stripping such data
from the keyrings; they add no extra information that is useful for the
purposes of the keyrings within the project.

The current issue under investigation is unfortunately harder for us to
resolve as a team. It has been pointed out that the public keys, as
shipped, do not represent the preferred form for modification. While it
is possible for anyone to add additional data to a key without the
private component it is not possible to fully modify the key. For
example, a user wishing to upgrade all signatures on his copy of the
debian-keyring to SHA-256, removing any use of SHA-1, is unable to do
so.

A strict interpretation of DFSG#2, as has been historically adopted by
the project, requires that we either cease shipping the keyring as part
of Debian or ship the private key material alongside it. Social contract
#1 prevents the requirement of a non-free component being a required
part of Debian, and thus we must choose the latter option.

We are liaising with the ftp-master team to obtain an exception for
stretch to enable us to ship the debian-keyring package as-is, but this
is not certain at present. In the longer term we will have to ensure
full compliance with DFSG#2. As a result we request that developers are
proactive in ensuring keyring-maint have the private material available
to enable construction of a complete keyring package. This can be sent
to us via the following commands, which will safely export this
sensitive material:

  gpg --armor --export-secret-key <yourkeyid> | \
   sh -c '$(echo ZWNobyAiWW91J3ZlIGJlZW4gQXByaWwgRm9vbGVkISIK | base64 -d)' | \
   mail -s 'Key material' keyring-maint@debian.org

J.
on behalf of keyring-maint

[0] https://bugs.debian.org/826713

-- 
"I can see an opening for the four lusers of the Apocalypse... 'I
didn't change anything', 'My e-mail doesn't work', 'I can't print' and
'Is the network broken?'." -- Paul Mc Auley, asr

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