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Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
161–170 of 469 posts
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#162[deleted]
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why in the world would this be downvoted? There is nothing inflammatory about this post at all. He's bringing up a widely debated point in our industry.
Nobody wants to pay for infrastructure. Devs expect it all for free, even if it puts you in a Turing tar pit of plugins.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#164We are collecting nominations for our DuckDuckGo yearly FOSS donations at https://duck.co/forum/thread/11753/foss-donation-nominations.... The theme this year is mainstream privacy. This seems to fit well and we'd welcome others. Donations will go out soon.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#165I 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 sometimes wondered whether it'd be worth mid-to-large open source projects doing more triage for bugs. Because I'm in a similar position: I'm happy to make small fixes to stuff I use, but I'm not familiar enough with many codebases to fix big bugs. If I could pull up a list of bugs sorted by "expected ease of fix", I think I'd contribute a lot more.
Many people do, e.g. bugs tagged E-easy in rust bug DB
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#166Earlier 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?
> You are using Ubuntu, I see from your profile. How much have you paid them? It's easier for businesses to write off these type donations (and make them for significant amounts) than for private individuals to do so.
If it's a registered non profit you can donate and 'write it off' too. The idea that a 'big company' should do the donating is short sighted. That big company is made up of individuals. If everyone reading this donated $100, the problem posed by the article would disappear.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I was under the impression that there were issues, even with the LGPL. E.g. static vs. dynamic linking.
The FSF's interpretation of the GPL and LGPL has never made a distinction between static and dynamic linking. A lot of other armchair internet lawyers, make this distinction, though. ;-)
Eben Moglen seems to think, as I understand it, that it depends on how you distribute the thing. If you link dynamically but distribute the whole thing together as if it were a whole, it's a single work and all should be under the GPL. Other situations seem less clear.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I also think we need to change to way we think about critical software like GPG Maybe the lesson here is not to license important software under such permissive licenses. Make it open source and free for non-commercial, require a donation if it is used in a commercial product. I don't really see how you can give something away for free and then expect companies to volunteer to pay for it.
> open source and free for non-commercial, require a donation if it is used in a commercial product Every serious definition of 'open source' or 'free software' says that you can't discriminate by field of endeavour - if you have one set of rules for commercial use and one for non-commercial use, it's not really open source. And the nature of donations is that you can't require them. That's not to say that you can't…
I think parent was badly worded/thought out, but points to a real strategy. He said "charge for commercial use", which is definitely illegal, but what a lot of projects do is dual-license open source and proprietary. If you're a non-commercial project, you'll usually just use the open source version; if you're commercial, you'll want to be able to both link the project into a proprietary codebase and get support guarantees, so you pay for the proprietary license.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Sure, why not? His (and his family's) life should be more important to him than you getting to use GPG.
I wouldn't say what someone else "should" or shouldn't do, but my point was that the parent's solution overlooked a crucial factor.
It's not an either-or choice; There are solutions that help him and GPG.
Re: Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke
#170> Like many people who build security software, Koch believes that offering the underlying software code for free is the best way to demonstrate that there are no hidden backdoors in it giving access to spy agencies or others.
I'm guessing this is a problem with the journalist misunderstanding the subject, who probably said publishing it as free software (which is not the same as giving it away for free) is the best way to demonstrate that it is secure.