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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

#241

Post by TheSilentMan »

anebg wrote: post #180
chkuendig wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIY: That's 3.8% assuming everybody donated by credit card. Anybody got an idea why they pay so much?

Typical credit card fees are 2.9% + 30c. Assuming that they have regular fees at not non-profit rates(which tend to be lower), it would make their average donation amount to be around $7.14 Source: 48995/689239 = (x*.029+.30)/x

With that many transactions they should be able to negotiate a lower fee than that. My company did a bit over 4 million in CC transactions last year and our rate is 1.9% and I believe the flat rate per transaction is 25 cents.

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

#242

Post by rakoo »

joshstrange wrote: post #174
agwa wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matthew Green, who sits on the CII's advisory board, tweeted: "CII does what's beneficial to its members. Privacy tools aren't" [ https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/56338899320386764... ] ...which indicates to me that GnuPG wasn't sold properly. It's not just a "privacy tool" -- it's one of the ways that software (including OpenSSL) is securely distributed. I would guess that quite a few of the CII's members…

In what world are privacy tools not beneficial to the CII? And how does OpenSSL not fall under "privacy tool"??

GPG's goal is about privacy, while OpenSSL is more of a toolbox with most of the tools you need for anything crypto-related.

I imagine those people need to control integrity of the software, to make sure it is deployed correctly on their servers and distributed securely to their clients and users, and OpenSSL has all they need for that. Privacy, OTOH, is unneeded because they are not (or rather much less) after their own or their users' privacy.

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

#243

Post by sukilot »

davidw wrote: post #223
teamhappy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. We call it Free and Open Source Software for a reason. Open Source means the code is open (i.e., you can study it), Free means it's licensed under a Free Software license (it doesn't necessarily mean free of charge). People usually omit the "Free and" part when they talk about FOSS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software // Anybody want to tell me why you vote me down? Am I wrong?

For practical purposes, free and open source software are the same things with the same licenses. They're just different philosophies and goals.

Does Open Source guarantee the right to publish derivative source?

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

#244

Post by jakejake »

takluyver wrote: post #134
unfamiliar wrote: post #105

Earlier 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…

Your mention of exceptions to the GPL is probably what the OP was talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing

It might be a little tricky in the case of GPG since it is really a GPL port of the commercial PGP software. So a major reason for it's original existence is that it is GPL code.

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

#245

Post by 15thandwhatever »

tormeh wrote: post #23
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.

This. I mean, if anyone would miss him working on it, they would already be donating yearly anyway. Right? You shouldn't always work just for money, but this is financial ingratitude.

By the time he searches for a new job, interviews, successfully gets a new job, stops contributing, and people finally NOTICE that he's abandoned the project: it's already too late.

You can offer him all the $5 donations in the world, but he has a full-time job now and has no reason to return to this life of "financial ingratitude".

I'm pretty sure we all would miss him working on it, either directly or indirectly, I think, as developers, we do a horrible job of assessing our blind spots when it comes to infrastructure.

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

#246

Post by davidw »

sukilot wrote: post #243
davidw wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For practical purposes, free and open source software are the same things with the same licenses. They're just different philosophies and goals.

Does Open Source guarantee the right to publish derivative source?

Yes, look up the definition:

http://opensource.org/osd-annotated

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

#247

Post by sukilot »

ekidd wrote: post #93
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…

As jordigh points out, RMS has always been quite happy to charge money for software. For example, the FSF sells a $5,000 "Deluxe Distribution" compiled for a platform of your choice: http://gnu.ist.utl.pt/order/order.html I've spoken to various people at the FSF, and they're generally quite enthusiastic about charging money for GPLed software. But to make a larger point, if you try to model RMS's behavior using cynic…

FWIW, RMS does live mostly as a nomadic ascetic (sort of like a Buddhist monk surviving on alms), which suggests that he believes that is an acceptable lifestyle for a hacker.

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

#249

Post by davidw »

sophacles wrote: post #80
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…

There are many free software projects that are decently or well funded. They have no problem meeting their donation requests, and having a good budget year over year. These projects are usually end user facing, in a way that their dependencies aren't. It seems reasonable that these projects should consider adding items to their budget to redistribute funds to projects that they depend on. Some probably do this, howev…

> There are many free software projects that are decently or well funded.

Which ones are those?

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

#250

Post by abc_lisper »

tw04 wrote: post #12

It's a sad day when Farmville can become a billion dollar business and Werner can't feed his kids. I'm curious if he's truly living on ~$20k/year. That seems ridiculously low for life in Germany. Or if he's got other sources of income to bolster that. Either way, what really needs to happen is companies that build programs off his work need to make a concerted effort to donate to the project. Heck, set aside a small…

I hear you brother. Strange world indeed. I don't use GPG but I am donating some, just to tilt the balance a bit.
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