[PATCH v2] Documentation: process: Document suitability of Proton Mail for kernel development

[PATCH v2] Documentation: process: Document suitability of Proton Mail for kernel development

[Conor Dooley]

From: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>

Proton Mail automatically picks up PGP keys for those with kernel.org
accounts (and other domains!) which provide WKD for their users & uses
them to encrypt emails, including patches.

Document the behaviour & Proton Mail's unsuitability for kernel
development.

Reviewed-by: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
---
Changes in v2:
- Add section about why encrypted mail may be an issue
- Use Konstantin's wording about the bridge.
---
 Documentation/process/email-clients.rst | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst b/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
index fc2c46f3f82d..471e1f93fa09 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
@@ -350,3 +350,23 @@ although tab2space problem can be solved with external editor.
 
 Another problem is that Gmail will base64-encode any message that has a
 non-ASCII character. That includes things like European names.
+
+Proton Mail
+***********
+
+Proton Mail has a "feature" where it looks up keys using Web Key Directory
+(WKD) and encrypts mail to any recipients for which it finds a key.
+Kernel.org publishes the WKD for all developers who have kernel.org accounts.
+As a result, emails sent using Proton Mail to kernel.org addresses will be
+encrypted.
+Unfortunately, Proton Mail does not provide a mechanism to disable the
+automatic encryption, viewing it as a privacy feature.
+The automatic encryption feature is also enabled for mail sent via the Proton
+Mail Bridge, so this affects all outgoing messages, including patches sent with
+``git send-email``.
+Encrypted mail adds unnecessary friction, as other developers may not have mail
+clients, or tooling, configured for use with encrypted mail and some mail
+clients may encrypt responses to encrypted mail for all recipients, including
+the mailing lists.
+Unless a way to disable this "feature" is introduced, Proton Mail is unsuited
+to kernel development.
-- 
2.39.0

Re: [PATCH v2] Documentation: process: Document suitability of Proton Mail for kernel development

[Jonathan Corbet]

Conor Dooley <conor@kernel.org> writes:

> From: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
>
> Proton Mail automatically picks up PGP keys for those with kernel.org
> accounts (and other domains!) which provide WKD for their users & uses
> them to encrypt emails, including patches.
>
> Document the behaviour & Proton Mail's unsuitability for kernel
> development.
>
> Reviewed-by: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>
> Reviewed-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
> Signed-off-by: Conor Dooley <conor.dooley@microchip.com>
> ---
> Changes in v2:
> - Add section about why encrypted mail may be an issue
> - Use Konstantin's wording about the bridge.
> ---
>  Documentation/process/email-clients.rst | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 20 insertions(+)

Applied, thanks.

jon