How to Save PGP

Tomcat666 sends in: "The Register got some excerpts from an interview with Phil Zimmerman. He talks about how it might be possible to save PGP (Network Associates couldn't sell it, and will stop its development), OpenPGP and the future (industry-backed OpenPGP?)." A follow-up to our story yesterday about Network Associates mothballing PGP.

Comments

Let's create a /. Corporation

[Choco-man]

/. get's about what, a million unique hits? NAI put 36 million into PGP, and since they're not finding a buyer, we can assume they'd be willing to take somewhat less for it.. let's say 25 million. If /. changes it's subscribtion pay pal account instead to be a funding house to purchase PGP, each user could donate 25 dollars,and we'd have a co-op that now owns PGP. This co-op could then market it as an inexpensive payware product, available for download complete with source code for a $5 license fee. This rids the need for /. subscriptions by generating income, opens the most current version of source code up for review, and allows independant programmers to modify this source code to continually improve the product.

A win win situation! 8-)

IANAL. This is tongue in cheek. I hate having to explain myself...

GPG, OpenPGP, and what needs saving

[PureFiction]

In the article Phil focuses on easy to use GUI interfaces for less technically adept end users as the major feature that the OpenPGP/GPG projects need to focus on. This is the main advantage that the commerical version provided, and the main thing lacking in all the other alternatives.

He clearly states that the PGP protocol is in no danger whatsoever, and will continue to remain widely implemented.

Having spent many hours deciphering gpg command lines to use PGP to its full potential makes you realize how usefull a simple, easy to use GUI interface to a PGP would be. (Implicit in this task is integration with other applications, however, you can find plugin support for almost anything that you wish to use PGP in)

Seen as a bumper sticker...

[gartogg]

GnuPG. Because only the technically oriented deserve privacy.

Scandelous

[SirSlud]

> And what's scandalous is that NAI has OS X and XP-ready versions, but won't ship them.

We need some laws that force work into the public domain if it wont be exploited for the private domain. I'm sick of companies keeping what will go into the dustbin. This is another example of how too much private interest can /create/ inefficiency in a market rather than reduce it.

Of course, I respect that the work in question would probably have to pass some criterium whereby its release into the public domain would not cause significant damage to the company in question (if the company is to live on), but surely we can't believe that scenarios like this outweigh the benifits of laws forcing companies to push work they lose interest/money in back into the public domain?

GPG is available, and the Germans are improving it

[dwheeler]

So, PGP is may not be available in the future. This is no big deal, really, since GPG is already available and can be used as a replacement.

It's true that currently GPG's user interface is terrible for beginning users if they have to use it directly. So, clearly, you want to use programs that embed GPG (like Evolution). Also, note that the German government is funding further development of GPG. They specifically say that their funding will be used to make GPG more usable by less experienced users, including porting the software to other operating systems, developing graphical user interfaces (GUI) and writing a handbook.

Thus, this sounds like a short-term problem at worst.