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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

#191

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

azernik wrote: post #168
takluyver wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 guar…

It is not "definitely illegal" to set license terms to whatever one wishes including restricting commercial use. The GPL hinges upon copyright to enforce it's provisions. Copying privileges are revoked for people who violate the license. This is a legal "hack" to get around the need to establish a contract or exchange funds. The same sort of rules can be applied for any other criteria such as the type of user. If I want to prohibit blue-eyed people from using my software I am free to do so. Dual licensing isn't a requirement to do this.

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

#192

Post by foomoo »

hf wrote: post #181
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

The counter on the kindly linked donation page went from EUR 49.470 to EUR 65.126 in the last 60 minutes (precisely).

That's really cool. When people unite...

My name isn't even on the list of recent donors anymore, that's going fast! Maybe he'll wake up tomorrow and hit refresh a couple times to be sure there's nothing wrong with the counter, hehe.

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

#193

Post by trurl »

ryaniscool wrote: post #85
hf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://www.fsf.org/about/financial The FSF had revenue of 1.25 million in 2013. I'm not trying to comment on where it came from or where it went to. I'm only pointing out that they are not in a very similar position.

This is partly why I stopped donating to the FSF. They're dumping some amount of that money into misguided PR campaigns rather than helping out the developers trying to make free software better.

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

#194

Post by walterbell »

moron4hire wrote: post #184
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…

This issue has been bugging me lately, given that I would like to start a product-oriented business, but I'm only one guy, who has to freelance to pay the bills. The problem, I think, lies in the lack of balance between different types of "users", their ability to absorb risk, and their ability to advertise. For an individual developer, new product development is a chicken-or-egg issue: you need money to live, but yo…

There's no general answer to your question. It's like game theory, depends on the players and context (technical, legal, financial, market maturity).

Juce and PyQt were created by single developers, so it's not impossible. Staking out and defending a niche would be a prerequisite, open-source or proprietary.

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

#195

Post by ceejayoz »

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?

He's not immortal - at some point someone else has to step up to the plate.

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

#196

Post by xgbi »

azernik wrote: post #168
takluyver wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 guar…

This is exactly what we ( http://linphone.org ) do: we have a GPLV2 license that's used in many many open source projects, and we have a specific license for commercial projects, for which we provide support and ability to not disclose the sources that our clients might modify.

This kind of way to function give enough money to employ 10 people, and also secured a lot of new developments (encryption, video, etc.). Disclaimer: I'm just an employee, not the founder.

I would advise him to switch to that kind of licensing, if he wishes to. There's no reason he shouldn't be able to live through his work.

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

#197

Post by redthrow »

"He says he's made about $25,000 per year since 2001 — a fraction of what he could earn in private industry"

The developer of git-annex assistant was happy when he received $20,000 on Kickstarter and he said with this money he could dedicate his time on this project for a full year. [1]

Maybe he could also start a Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc campaign so that he could hire another full-time developer? If enough people find this additional workforce on this project worthwhile, it will be funded.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assista...

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

#198

Post by lloeki »

pyre wrote: post #19
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 "librarie…

> Most GPG "libraries" in languages like Python and Ruby are just wrappers around the GPG command-line, because there is no proper library.

IIUC this is intentional design of GPG 1.x vs GPG 2.x: the former is statically linked binaires for "security reasons" while the latter is a shared lib (libgcrypt) + binaries with exactly the same features.

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

#199

Post by Samumu »

Would it help if some highly visible figure like Snowden or Poitras weighed in in some interview? I mean, they probably have a lot on their shoulders already but I cannot see anyone else who would be more motivated and more efficient at this task.

I am probably missing something though. They must be somehow aware of the situation already and not consider it a top priority for some reason.

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