[tptacek]

These are arguments about things other than safety. In discussions about whether things are "standardized" or "federated" or how their "ecosystems" look, the safety of actual people is an externality. That's especially so because the overwhelming majority of technologists with strong opinions about secure messaging never send a message that needs real cryptographic protection against a motivated adversary; the entire concept of safety is an externality to those people. But the real, life-or-death cases are not rare. It is malpractice to suggest that people entrust their lives (or their life's savings) to shoddy encryption so that other technologists can have a federated ecosystem of standards.

If this were and engineering discussion about tie rods holding elevated walkways in a downtown hotel, we'd have no trouble setting aside all the other arguments and recognize the core, overwhelming priority. But because our discipline is not an engineering discipline, despite pretending otherwise, we're forced to humor these frankly unethical debates.