People were willing to explicitly explain why it was inadequate rather than keep it secret. That is the difference.

What was to explain? It had a 56-bit key.

Was that the only thing wrong with it? The 90s was definitely before my time but I was under the impression reading about it that there were also fundamental flaws with DES which lead to the competition which ultimately produced AES.

	▲	tptacek 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that was what was wrong with DES. I mean, it also had an 8-byte block size, which turns out to be inadequate as well, but that's true of IDEA and Blowfish as well.