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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

#111

Post by dragonwriter »

fivedogit wrote: post #83
hf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We're our own worst enemies. Software developers have this sort of circular firing squad where nobody wants to be the first to keep their source closed and try to charge for it. Because then you're just "greedy" and not pure enough. But that'll never change unless all of a sudden we say "Ok, on the count of 3, everybody stop giving away their hard-earned expertise for free. 1... 2... 3..." We're like musicians nowada…

> Software developers have this sort of circular firing squad where nobody wants to be the first to keep their source closed and try to charge for it.

Er, the first to keep their source closed and try to charge for it happened a long time ago, and there are huge numbers of developers at firms from one-man shops to massive megacorps still doing it today.

The idea that closed-source for-profit development is a novel idea that violates norms in the software development community and that everyone is afraid to try is cute, but, you know, completely contrary to the actual facts of both the current state and history of software development.

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

#112

Post by Lord_Zero »

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

I dont see a way to contact anyone there. Can they please add bitcoin?

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

#114

Post by drbawb »

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 think people would donate if they knew about it.

Oh certainly, I use GPG on a daily basis, yet it never even occurred to me that such an ubiquitous project would have trouble gathering funds!

I tossed in a donation as soon as I saw the link in the article.

---

I remember jOOq (a Java SQL DSL) had similar troubles raising donations. They ended up moving to a commercial licensing model for 3.2+ that provides connectors for "enterprise" databases as well as professional support.

Had I seen a banner asking for donations, I would've gladly donated what they're now charging for licenses. -- It is an excellent library.

However I feel like the tooling does them a disservice. When the library can be added by tossing a few lines into `pom.xml` and having Maven fetch it, and the API can mostly be figured out w/ javadoc and your IDE's autocomplete: how many developers will even visit the project homepage and see a "We need funding!" banner?

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

#116

Post by joycey »

Here's something I think should get more love and is pretty relevant: a service that will automatically pay a percentage of Bitcoin donations for every submission to a GitHub repository: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/BitHub

So if you donate to Open Whisper Systems, you can see that your donations are going directly to those that are contributing to the project, and you get paid more if you're contributing more. I've sent in a few PR's to their iOS repo, and it'd be awesome to see it implemented in other privacy OSS projects. It's obviously not a perfect system, but I think it's a pretty cool way of funding OSS.

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

hf wrote: post #71
peapicker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I freely confess to being flabbergasted by these displays of less-than-rigorous thought processes. How would a free software project 'pay it forward'? They are in a very similar position, aren't they? Edit: For some reason, I can't reply to child comments (probably a cool-off time-out at work?). Just a short note here, then: $1.25e6 for the FSF translates to 10 developers like Koch being paid (the donation page quote…

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by GauntletWizard »

pyre wrote: post #95
jordigh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> We give you the code, you can do whatever you want with it, but if you want to build on top of ours The problem here is determining where the divide between "using the software" and "building on top of ours" is. The line becomes blurry when the software is (e.g.) a library where the basic use of the library is to base other software off of it (as opposed to a desktop app -- e.g. GnuCash -- where "usage" has a more…

Which is why there's an explicit form of the GPL for libraries; the LGPL.

There still exists uncertainty and ways around it (You can execute GPL programs or write shell scripts so that GPL programs execute your code) such that you don't have to distribute the major parts of your codebase, but the GPL has an explicitly different version for libraries that are supposed to be linked in to non-free software vs libraries that are cores of GPL software.

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

#120

Post by elpachuco »

hackuser wrote: post #81
a3n wrote: post #14

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.

> 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. In your scenario, what will happen to GPG? The world just loses this essential asset?

>>In your scenario, what will happen to GPG? The world just loses this essential asset?

I say f*ck the world.

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