In the last hour or so (I think since this hit the front page) there have been approximately €2000 of donations added to the drive at https://gnupg.org/, nudging it over €40000.
Please do your part, and keep that bar moving.
Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
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Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#22For bitcoin donations, you can go to [1], which gives the address as 12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzkEyCpGq [2]. The address is not generated per user, and is dedicated to GnuPG.
[1] https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.nojs.html
[2] https://blockchain.info/address/12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzk...
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#23He'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.
This. I mean, if anyone would miss him working on it, they would already be donating yearly anyway. Right?
You shouldn't always work just for money, but this is financial ingratitude.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#24I 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 "librarie…
Wrapping the command line should be a little bit safer from a security perspective, since a memory exfiltration bug won't transfer across processes. Just don't use the shell between the wrapper and the command.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#25I 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…
You should have tried searching for GnuPG: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GnuPG&sort=byPopularity&prefix...
I remember it made the front page (but that might have been during business hours here in europe).
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#26Given the general scarcity of talent in the business, it should really be trivial for a high end IT security consultancy to pay Werner a €3000/month (ie. enough to live on, if not extravagantly) retainer to be available ~10 hours a month to consult on encryption matters (or something like that).
I wonder if it all really comes down to "Really I am better at programming than this business stuff." or if there is some unstated dogmatism that gets in the way.
It seems to me there's a parallel to someone like Moxie Marlinspike who's vaguely in the same field, but seems to be doing very well for himself.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#27Calling 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
What is the simplest program out there right now, open-source, that will let me sign binaries with a key?
I'm experimenting to do a dead-simple licensing system using SSL certs and signing--rough idea is, cert is from me, and when it expires, software says "lol no get new cert".
I'm sure this has been done before, but the amount of custom license management code I've seen in the wild makes me wonder...
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#28For bitcoin donations, you can go to [1], which gives the address as 12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzkEyCpGq [2]. The address is not generated per user, and is dedicated to GnuPG. [1] https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.nojs.html [2] https://blockchain.info/address/12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzk...
Is this address verifiable on the GPG site?
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#29And this is the weird conflict with open source software. OSS is primarily written because somebody needed it and didn't have it. If they have it, and it works, they have no need to write it or support it. Eventually somebody stops supporting it, and then we all realize we're in trouble, somebody forks it and support is taken up by somebody who needs it.
I think this works. It's sad that it depends on exploiting the virtually unpaid work of a few committed die-hards. But basically, it's the only way we can have good gratis software without something stupid like bundling ads, lack of source code or 'services-based' models. It's clear from all the other unfunded OSS projects that corporate sponsorship isn't going to happen unless they're getting something in return.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#30Donated.