Zimmermann Suggests Freeing PGP Source

broody writes "NewsForge has an interesting article detailing Phillip R Zimmermann's lament at selling PGP. Since he cannot afford to buy it back outright, he is pushing for Network Associates to 'open source' it. Well, the GUI and SDK anyway. I'll say this, he's an interesting little capitalist."

Comments

Re:Free PGP? How about GnuPGP

[cygnusx]

GnuPG (not GnuPGP) dont work in Windows

GnuPG _does_ work on Windows: http://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/gnupg-w32-1.0.6 -2.zip

But it's not graphical. For that, I've been using WinPT for some time. It's a pretty good replacement for PGPtray, not as pretty though. And it imported all my PGP 6.x/Win Keys fine too. Download with all dependencies here

Re:Dead Man's Switch

[Bruce Perens]

This is sort of like source-code escrow, but not customer-specific.

In source-code escrow, the vendor promises to provide the source-code to the customer if the vendor goes out of business.

The problem is that bankruptcy courts often overturn source-code escrow clauses, because the source code turns out to be the firm's only salable asset.

The best solution is to free the code first, and for the customer to be careful not to become dependent on closed-source.

Bruce

Re:Free PGP? How about GnuPGP

[1010011010]

It does work in OutLook. I'm using it right now.

Go get it here:
http://www3.gdata.de/gpg/

Re:Dead Man's Switch

[Bruce Perens]

I lost the original case but found the following on google - there's more there. The first two citations here directly address the bankruptcy issue:

• http://my.ais.net/~lawmsf/articl15.htm
• http://www.wernick.com/Articles/1986Jun01%20Sour ce %20Code%20Escrow.pdf
• http://www.softescrow.com/faq.html

Thanks

Bruce

Windows users: try GPGshell with Nullify GnuPG

[Jim Efaw]

I was using WinPT for a while, until I stumbled on GPGshell. It calls GnuPG to do the work, so you never have to worry about entering your passphrase into a GUI. IMHO, it's a lot nicer than WinPT. When you install it, you get 3 programs, which don't need each other to work:

• GPGkeys, a program to do manage all the keys.
• GPGtray, which has a lot of the options on the system tray, and magically knows the "right" thing to do with the clipboard if you double-click it. Highlighting a PGP key in a terminal window then double-clicking on an icon makes importing keys really slick.
• GPGtools, which lets you drag-and-drop files onto it.

So anyway, here's what you do:

1. Get GnuPG (1.0.7 or later) from Nullify. It comes with an installer, plus contains those sinful patented algorithms (like IDEA) that PGP was fond of using in various versions.
2. Get GPGshell, install, and tell it where you put GnuPG.

So far this setup has had no problem dealing with any PGP messages I've encountered, from 2.6.2 to 7.x, but I haven't tested it extensively.