How is this different from gpg -ear?

[osresearch]

gpg -ear [email protected] < input-file will also encrypt a file with a recipient's public key. Does this do something different?

[georgyo]

In the real PGP, you can have someone's PGP public key which contains cool metadata such as email address. For some reason, people thing sharing a PGP public key is hard. But people don't think ssh-keys are hard.

The idea is that I can encrypt a file with just your ssh public keys.
https://github.com/osresearch.keys

This omits many of the cool parts of PGP. So a key is never signed, so there is no trust model. There is also no public key metadata.

The times I seen PGP used in practice, one person creates a key on the spot, and sends their publickey over email. The PGP trust model does not exist here either.

So the idea is like PGP but remove all the bits that make it hard to use and understand. People always use it wrong anyway.

[georgyo]

Would you mind reading the Why section, and seeing if that answer's your questions?