Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke • Hacker News Board

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#11

Post by abandonliberty » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

kogir wrote: post #7

This is sad but not super surprising. Historically, if you had money and wanted a reasonable UI and cleaner integrations, you bought PGP (now from Symantec). GPG was always for people unwilling to pay. For the record I donated. I'm just pointing out that writing something that's bundled and distributed as part of something else means nobody thinks about your project, or in many cases even realizes they're using it.

PGP went commercial to deal with lawsuits, but it is still open source.

I would like if someone with more understanding of the situation could outline the risks of allowing PGP to be the only implementation.

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#12

Post by tw04 » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

It's a sad day when Farmville can become a billion dollar business and Werner can't feed his kids. I'm curious if he's truly living on ~$20k/year. That seems ridiculously low for life in Germany. Or if he's got other sources of income to bolster that.

Either way, what really needs to happen is companies that build programs off his work need to make a concerted effort to donate to the project. Heck, set aside a small percentage of revenue and consider it a cost of business.

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#13

Post by smcl » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

I had no idea this project (and others) had so few contributors. I'd love to be involved in some Open Source project but I always feel like "yeh there's probably millions of people far more talented than me wanting to contribute" and I've no idea how to start. Some people suggest taking a look at the open bug lists for software you use frequently, but on the few occasions I've tried that (python, gcc, and a couple of others) I've ended up digging through lists of tough bugs each with fairly impressive sounding discussions by people who are way more familiar with the whole ecosystem than I am and it's sort of intimidating.

I did manage to do some isolated contributions to Open Corporates (http://turbot.opencorporates.com) where the community are super-welcoming and very patient, but I've felt a little isolated and like I'm not exactly giving much back. Apologies for the mildly-OT rambling.

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#14

Post by a3n » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:39 PM UTC

He's been voluntarily cheated. He should take a job, take care of himself (no one else will), and give gpg whatever time he has left, if he has the energy.

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#15

Post by gandalfu » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

agwa wrote: post #4

Calling GnuPG "email encryption software" really understates its importance. It's also used in countless applications to encrypt data at rest, and GPG signatures are used to secure the distribution of software. For instance, GPG is an essential part of the package managers of Debian, Ubuntu, and RedHat. Here is a link to the donation page: https://gnupg.org/donate/index.html

Thanks for the link, just donated!

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#16

Post by agwa » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #2

There does seem to be a need for an "Internet fund". Pick 100 of the core free technologies that everyone relies on and pay people to maintain them.

I'm really dismayed that the Core Infrastructure Initiative, which was created in the aftermath of Heartbleed to fund OpenSSL and other critical software, has chosen to prioritize NTP, and not GnuPG[1]. Most of the companies that rely on OpenSSL are probably using a distro that uses GPG to securely distribute the OpenSSL package.

[1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core-infrastructure-...

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#17

Post by pyre » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

smcl wrote: post #13

I had no idea this project (and others) had so few contributors. I'd love to be involved in some Open Source project but I always feel like "yeh there's probably millions of people far more talented than me wanting to contribute" and I've no idea how to start. Some people suggest taking a look at the open bug lists for software you use frequently, but on the few occasions I've tried that (python, gcc, and a couple of…

> I've ended up digging through lists of tough bugs each with fairly impressive sounding discussions by people who are way more familiar with the whole ecosystem than I am and it's sort of intimidating.

Sometimes it's small things, like documentation. For example:

http://bugs.python.org/issue17701

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#18

Post by thrownaway2424 » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #2

There does seem to be a need for an "Internet fund". Pick 100 of the core free technologies that everyone relies on and pay people to maintain them.

Back when, there were one time acts of funding such as the red hat and va linux ipos that gave shares to authors of the software they were distributing.

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#19

Post by pyre » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

lawl wrote: post #8

I think the biggest problem is visibility for these projects. They need to be louder. In the case of openssl, I had no idea that they were severly underfunded (until heartbleed). Same for GPG until now. I didn't hear they asked for donations. And I doubt I'm the only one. So I quickly checked if maybe this was big on HN at a point and I just missed it. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20donation&sort=byPopulari... h…

I knew that the developer pool for GPG was pretty small, and that this is a big reason why development isn't always fast.

On the other hand, I had no idea that he was working full-time on it, and having money trouble.

Also: If you search for "GPG Koch" you can come across this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942254

EDIT: An example of development that is slow-coming: library support. Most GPG "libraries" in languages like Python and Ruby are just wrappers around the GPG command-line, because there is no proper library.

Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke

#20

Post by api » Thu, Feb 05, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

This is why "free as in beer" is a problem for "free as in freedom." Just to maintain things costs money because people take money to live, not to mention how much it costs to field things that are competitive on UI/UX and other metrics with big closed ecosystems.