Re: Web of Trust work [Was: kernel.org tooling update]

Uwe Kleine-König
2026-01-27T08:39:20Z

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Hello James,

On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 06:23:08PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Mon, 2026-01-26 at 18:32 +0100, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
> > Actually I'd like to see you/us add still more burden and asking
> > developers to only hand in keys with an expiry date <= (say) 3 years.
> > Something similar to what
> > https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0063.html#bare-minimum-requirements
> > requests.
>
> You have seen Linus' views on gpg key expiry, right?
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-scsi/CAHk-=wi03SZ4Yn9FRRsxnMv1ED5Qw25Bk9-+ofZVMYEDarHtHQ@mail.gmail.com/

Thanks for the link. I was aware that Linus isn't a big fan of PGP and
GnuPG. Still I think that having an expiration for your PGP certificates
is a very sensible thing. All at least halfway sensible howtos about PGP
handling that I saw in the past strongly recommend to set an expiry
date. (e.g.

https://riseup.net/en/security/message-security/openpgp/gpg-best-practices#use-an-expiration-date-less-than-two-years

which isn't up to date in every corner any more, but the section about
expiry is still accurate.
According to https://book.sequoia-pgp.org/sq_key_generation.html, the
certificates generated using sq default to a 3 year expiry.)

Yes, I agree it's inconvenient, but updating is a usual necessity for
secure systems. SSL certificates have an expiry; letsencrypt will soon
limit expiries to 45 days. We regularly preach that people should update
their kernel and roll our eyes about hardware running Linux 5.15.153
(that's my DOCSIS router) or 2.6.26.8 (that's my wifi radio).

Security is a moving target; and if you don't move with it, your
security level drops over time.

Looking at the thread you referenced above, I think Linus would have
been happy if he had your updated key in time. So I only see this as a
challenge to improve the keyring maintenance.

> As a result of that I've taken to using much longer expiry periods.

:-(

Best regards
Uwe

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