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

propublica.org

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

#211

Post by gcv »

gandalfu wrote: post #15
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

Thanks for the link, just donated!

I donated last year, and just donated again.

Really happy to see that this post on HN has traction, and delighted to watch the counter go up. GPG and other security projects need a way better tech PR push.

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

#212

Post by wmf »

jordigh wrote: post #125
mentat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was when distribution was via physical media. People don't value bits on the wire the same way nor view "distribution" as a valuable function.

Then is selling apps on app stores not profitable anymore? I was under the impression that it was.

App stores are profitable for a small number of UX experts. It's very hard for me to imagine many open source apps having good enough UX to survive the app store hunger games.

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

#214

Post by Xylakant »

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…

You're off on your numbers. The 120k are for him plus one developer. By that estimate that's 20 people for the FSF.

However, a lot of commercial entities use pgp as core of their business: all software packaged for the linux world is signed with gpg one way or another. All commercial distributions depend on it at their very core. I'm amazed that they don't fund gpg at least partially.

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

#216

Post by rdl »

Wow, they have done a pretty bad job of promoting their donation campaign. I use GPG, I love GPG, and I hadn't heard about it.

If they'd done it before 12-31, they could have easily gotten a lot more donations (due to tax year), especially from companies (who IIRC don't need it to be a 501c3).

Helping GPG market itself, especially for fundraising, would be a great way for a non-technical privacy advocate type to contribute meaningfully. I think a lot of those people exist.

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

#217

Post by eevilspock »

peapicker wrote: post #61
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.

A cultural and structural change is needed when things like GPG get nothing, while viral, superficial and gimmicky work gets snapped up for millions or billions, when end users choose free products that threaten privacy and flood our world with advertising rather than pay the price of a cup of coffee for quality trustworthy products.

Even sadder is the fact that these "free" things actually cost us much, much more. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237

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

#218

Post by rhblake »

tedks wrote: post #98
mseebach wrote: post #26

Given 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 u…

>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. Moxie Marlinspike was doing well for himself when he was squatting in pgh and train-hopping, too. Some people are just better at coercing life into doing what they want to do. I think it helps that Moxie is probably a few standard deviations more intelligent than most huma…

Don't know about Moxie's situation, but Werner Koch also has a young child and a wife [who's not working, according to the article] to support.

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

#219

Post by alex_duf »

drbawb wrote: post #114
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 connect…

> 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?

That's a good point.

Not sure how this can be technically addressed though

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

#220

Post by a3n »

Estragon wrote: post #110
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.

Whether he's been cheated or not depends on your values. Many people cheerfully give up revenue maximization in order to perform some service they perceive to be of great value. You can't really have a meaningful political movement without such people.

At 53 years old and $25,000/year, he almost certainly has not prepared for any reasonably comfortable or safe/secure retirement (not knowing anything else about his personal life). There will come a point where he simply cannot work. He must take care of himself first. Or, to put it another way, if he doesn't take care of himself, then he'll reach a point where he can no longer take care of GPG, much less any dependents.
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