Re: STARTTLS support

[CHENG Gao <chenggao@cyberhut.org>]

*On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:24:01 +0200
* Also sprach Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> CHENG Gao <chenggao@cyberhut.org> writes:
>
>> Please forgive me for asking one stupid question: what's the benefit of
>> STARTTLS over TLS (if server supports STARTTLS over IMAP)?
>
> Isn't STARTTLS just a hack to provide encryption without having to open
> more ports in the firewall, sort of?  STARTTLS is just that you contact
> a server the normal way, then say "STARTTLS", and then you start
> negotiating the encryption and stuff.
>
> TLS is just contacting a socket and then doing the encryption
> negotiation immediately, without saying "STARTTLS" in clear text first.

Thanks for your explanation.

I am wondering if starttls.el and tls.el could be merged. To my
understanding, they are to some extent same thing (anyway starttls is
tls). According to manual starttls is recommended way (if server
supports it), and gnutls is recommended tool. So IMHO starttls.el could
be merged into tls.el, and change starttls-program default to gnutls
instead of homebrewed starttls. Or even remove support of starttls (last
version is in 2005)?