Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > The not-so-well-hidden agenda was exactly that we _SHOULD_ not > mimick PGP. They do not have a requirement to encourage everybody > to use the same thing because each message is encrypted/signed > independently, i.e. they do not have to chain things like we do. To put it less succinctly, PGP does not have incentive to encourage everybody to converge to the same. They can afford to say "You can use whatever you among your circles agree to use and the rest of the world won't care". If two groups that have used different ones later meet, both of them can switch to a common one from that point forward, but their past exchanges won't affect the future. You cannot say the same thing for Git. Once you decide to merge two histories from two camps, which may have originated from the same codebase but then decided to use two different ones while they were forked, you'd be forced to support all three forever. We have a lot stronger incentive to discourage fragmentation.