What's the future for keys.pub?

[lessless]

Hi folks,

The latest commit dates back to 2021 and that makes me wonder if there is any future for keys.pub?

Regards.

[gabriel]

I've moved onto other projects for the moment. I'm not sure if I'll come back to this one.

[austinjp]

Oh man. Yikes. I really love keys.pub and moved to it for key management after keybase was acquired.

@gabriel your work on this is inspirational. Could you explain why you're unsure about returning to this project? Genuine question, I'm sure people would like to understand and help. Scoping the issue would be useful. Is it about time+money, or technical issues, or...?

Would it make sense to start some sort of team to support keys.pub into the future?

I'd really love for keys.pub to continue and grow.

[svoop]

@austinjp For online identity verification, you might want to check out Keyoxide (I'm not affiliated in any way). It's headless, no central server is necessary. It's basically a convention to store proofs at predefined places on services like GitHub or Mastodon, then store the corresponding claim in your GPG-key as notation.

It's then possible to verify the claims and proofs against one another using GPG alone. This way, you connect different online accounts on different services to one GPG key – and by extension online identity. This process is not simple, which is why easy to use clients exist for the web, Android etc. They basically consume a GPG-key fingerprint, collect the claims and use them to verify the proofs online. The result is then rendered e.g. as a webpage which lists all services and their proof status (red or green). You can link to this public webpage e.g. from your own homepage.

There's also a keyoxide CLI tool to simplify your proof-management.

It's no doubt more difficult than Keybase or keys.pub, but the fact that no central server is required makes sure that Zoom can't acquire it nor will it just die when developers like @gabriel take the call to move on – which is totally understandable, we've all been there numerous times.

[austinjp]

Thanks @svoop Yes, Keyoxide was on my list of options to check out. Looks good so far.

[TaaviE]

Maybe this issue could be pinned so that people could see it first on GitHub?

[pataquets]

Agreed on pinning the issue, though under a more meaningful title, which would depend on @gabriel intentions. Be it a "co-maintainers/help wanted" or "looking for adoption", whatever @gabriel feels best.
It would be sad to see such a useful project languish.
Of course, priorities change, as life does and there are a lot of caveats in project maintainership, but letting the project die would be the worst scenario.
Some links I've thought might be worth a read:

• https://opensource.guide/best-practices/
• https://medium.com/@shazow/how-to-hand-over-an-open-source-project-to-a-new-maintainer-db433aaf57e8

Also dropping https://adoptoposs.org which might come handy.

Whatever comes, also a big thank you to @gabriel for the great work and for sharing it!

[gabriel]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm don't know what to do with this project, I kind of want to resurrect it but my financial and mental health have to come first. Maybe someone will fork this or copy some ideas from it. But it should at least have warnings so people don't have expectations.

I've pinned this issue. I added this to the project README.

⚠️ Unfortunately, this project is not currently being maintained or worked on. ⚠️

Also on the website, a warning about the project not being worked on.

[pataquets]

So sad to hear that, @gabriel. It's very thoughtful on your part to clarify expectations, thanks a lot.
I hope your personal issues improve. First things first.
Reading the website, I understand that when things improve (hope it happens sooner than later) and you feel like it (which might not happen and it'll be okay), if you get some sponsorship (or maybe some help) you might eventually pick up again, which is perfectly fine as expectations go. However, I've noticed the message on the website varies slightly with the one in the README. I've sent PR #171 to match them (since I think website's is more useful and might help better). Also I've linked to this issue to provide better context.

To those interested in the project or picking up/helping/forking, be welcome to chime in!

Again, thanks @gabriel for sharing and I wish you the best and get well soon. Take care.