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TrueCrypt Gets a New Life, New Name

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-hopefully-won't-disappear-into-the-void dept.

storagedude writes: Amid ongoing security concerns, the popular open source encryption program TrueCrypt may have found new life under a new name. Under the terms of the TrueCrypt license — which was a homemade open source license written by the authors themselves rather than a standard one — a forking of the code is allowed if references to TrueCrypt are removed from the code and the resulting application is not called TrueCrypt. Thus, CipherShed will be released under a standard open source license, with long-term ambitions to become a completely new product.

5 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Does the TrueCrypt License by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 4, Insightful

    allow a fork to be released under a standard open source license?

    Because I can take software with a standard open source license and put TrueCrypt's name back into it.

    Not that I intend to do so, but it just seems off, somehow.

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  2. Re:FOSS names by gigaherz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The sillier the name the lower the chances someone will abuse that name for commercial reasons. Saves a lot of money on trademarks.

  3. Re:FOSS names by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good ones: Inkscape, Thunderbird, Blender, VirtualBox, Linux...

    Crappy ones: GIMP, Tahoe-LAFS, Ubuntu, Kdenlive, XFCE...

    I personally think that you hit the sweet spot when you have a name which sounds cool and professional, is easy to remember, and at least tries to vaguely describe the function of the program.

  4. Re: "CipherShed" by aix+tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It worked pretty OK for centuries. You could buy a "Plow from John Smith over in Blurn Hollows", or you could buy a "Plow from George Smith over in Redneck Fields", and nobody would be confused that they were called the same.

    These days, if you buy a "FuxMatic3000XP from XentTeck" one day, you have to make sure if you want to buy one a year later that neither the FuxMatic3000XP nor the XentTeck Trademark have been sold in the meantime and are completely different things and/or products, or if the company itself did a product switcheroo in the meantime.

  5. Secure? Wordpress? by X10 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Their site says "proudly powered by wordpress". Err, "security", "wordpress", isn't that mutually exclusive?

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