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Documentation: process: Document suitability of Proton Mail for kernel development

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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>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20221231152320.1340874-1-conor@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
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Conor Dooley 2022-12-31 15:23:21 +00:00 committed by Jonathan Corbet
parent 3760fe201c
commit 1d2ed9234c
1 changed files with 20 additions and 0 deletions
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Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
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@ -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.