[tor-dev] onion v2 deprecation plan?

[grarpamp]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:44 AM, Jonathan Marquardt <mail at parckwart.de> wrote:
> v3 onion services just seem like a way worse deal to the average user and
> the unknowledgeable admin. Mainly because the addresses are way too long.

Then it's analyzing whether shifting the default to v3 for the clueless and the
perhaps at risk is helpful anti-footshooting more than say string length.
What are the tools and threat models where v3 overrides v2.
Do they include proper educational docs and config options.
Are such things themselves an intolerable risk.

> Before at least Facebook, DuckDuckGo, The New York Times, the Debian Project

What capabilities, including string representations, do such large public
realworld services, and their users, need.
Are those served by v3 and or v2.
Are they trading something for the other.

> Mainly because the addresses are way too long.

Though ux was mentioned, v3 can be mangageable by users
to whatever degree. In onionland, there's usually commentary
that some do memorize a few memorable v2 onions if generated
lucky (phonetic, etc) or by regex matching generators, fewer users
brute memorize hard v2 strings, the rest just bookmark / file them,
or use various search / entry portals. Though v3 is a bit unwieldy,
that gets traded off by those that need the capabilities that only
v3 can provide. Among those that do know of v3, but don't explicitly
need its capabilities, yes, they often choose v2 for that reason,
in that case that's probably reasonable.

"Deprecation" may be vague term...
a) If defined as shifting v3 to be "provisioned by default" via docs
and function, while *continuing to support v2* functionality
on the network, there's no problem, everyone is happy.
b) While v2 and v3 do share some capabilities, since v2 and v3
do offer their own exclusive subset of capabilities to users
that cannot currently be found in the opposing version,
*removing v2 support* is a definite issue.

v3 is a nice advancement and is needed by lots of users
for what it can do for them, just as v2 is.