On Sun, 24 Apr 2005, David A. Wheeler wrote:

It may be better to have them as simple detached signatures, which are
completely separate files (see gpg --detached).
Yeah, gpg currently implements detached signatures
by repeating what gets signed, which is unfortunate,
but the _idea_ is the right one.

Actually, if we do totally separate files, then the detached thing is ok, 
and we migth decide to not call the objects at all, since that seems to be 
unnecessarily complex.

Maybe we'll just have signed tags by doing exactly that: just a collection 
of detached signature files. The question becomes one of how to name such 
things in a distributed tree. That is the thing that using an object for 
them would have solved very naturally.

		Linus