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Zimmermann Suggests Freeing PGP Source

Posted by timothy on from the like-the-wind dept.

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."

2 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Free PGP? How about GnuPGP by cygnusx · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  2. Re:Dead Man's Switch by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative
    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

    --
    Bruce Perens.