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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

#61

Post by peapicker »

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

Seems odd that the MANY projects dependent on GPG don't donate enough to GPG to employ one guy.

Do Free Software project with funding 'pay it forward' to the volunteers on other projects they heavily depend on? (I don't really know) If not, they deserve to suffer the consequences.

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

#63

Post by csl »

Torgo wrote: post #39
pyre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

is gpgme not a proper library? https://www.gnupg.org/%28it%29/related_software/gpgme/index.... I haven't used it, so I really don't know.

It's a library that talks through the shell. I was kinda disappointed when I learned that. But it may be on purpose, as someone else mentioned.

I've used it while making bindings for it for my Scheme project: https://github.com/cslarsen/mickey-scheme/tree/master/lib/op...

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

#64

Post by hf »

rmc wrote: post #57
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

Why aren't those organisations paying him money?

You are using Ubuntu, I see from your profile. How much have you paid them?

This is how the stories goes: we haven't figured out how to make good work worthwhile.

Perhaps we can learn something from our vast experience in profitably peddling shit?

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

#65

Post by _wmd »

GnuPG sounds like a prime candidate for Linux Foundation's core infrastructure initiative. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core-infrastructure-...

If they're willing to fund a new NTP implementation then they should be able to drop a few coins in the GnuPG bucket too

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

#66

Post by ianlevesque »

jordigh wrote: post #42
ChuckMcM wrote: post #34

I wonder sometimes if this is the legacy that RMS was thinking about. Sometimes, in my more cynical moments, it seems like we have somehow managed to trick a whole generation of programmers into giving "free stuff" to the world, enabling the creation of the very successful mega corporations which have then kept the value for themselves. Would it be impossible to create some sort of stipend program at FSF? After all t…

> I wonder sometimes if this is the legacy that RMS was thinking about. No. Free software was never about no money being involved. In fact, RMS himself used to get a lot of money by selling free software. Back in the day when Emacs was too big for the internet, RMS used to sell Emacs tapes at 100 USD each (with documentation and source code, of course). In fact, he still thinks that you should be charging money for d…

> Sadly, it doesn't seem to be happening this way. I don't understand why not.

In at least one case it's because a single open source contributor with an ideological conflict with App Stores was able to get an app removed:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-stor...

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

#67

Post by muyuu »

abandonliberty wrote: post #11
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.

His point stands though. GPG never caught on as a commercial product or something that people would pay for. Both are Open Source, that's not the issue.

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

#69

Post by BjoernKW »

The problem boils down to "Really I am better at programming than this business stuff.".

Someone with his talent and expertise should have no problem with getting highly paid consulting gigs. Then he could continue working on GPG in his free time and even use the consulting income for hiring additional programmers to work on GPG. There are quite a few product-based businesses that could be built upon GPG as well (secure email, corporate communication tools, some kind of public-key-based social network come to mind ...). These could be used to support the continued development of GPG itself.

It's of course not as easy as it sounds. Not everybody wants to deal with 'all that business stuff' and that's fine but then by all means find someone who can help you with that part. If you want to change the world sometimes idealism alone just isn't enough. You also have to proactively deal with the everyday stuff like where the cashflow for paying the bills will come from next month.

There's also a problem with the purism put forth by some of the 'free as in freedom' enthusiasts, most notably Richard Stallman, who seem to gloss over the fact that coders have to make a living, too or who even frown upon making money with software altogether. Software eats the world but even RMS can't eat software.

How many successful larger companies come to mind whose business model is based upon open source? Red Hat, Ubuntu and that's about it. If we truly want to avoid dilemmas like this one we also need to think about how to successfully implement sustainable open source business models.

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