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GPG Programmer Werner Koch Is Running Out of Money
New submitter jasonridesabike writes "ProPublica reports that Werner Koch, the man behind GPG, is in financial straits: "The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive. Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded."
(You can donate to the project here..)
Sub taxes, sub equipment, for a one man operation he could certainly be doing better in the private industry pushing dick pills and dick pics.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Can't he just sell support or something? Isn't there supposed to be viable funding models for FOSS projects?
He does sell support.
However, I suspect he's been offered many contracts and never knew about them:
There is something I'd like to do with GPG that isn't a standard yet. I'll have to remember to scrutinize Thunderbird's settings before sending him a solicitation.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And subtract retirement, and insurance payments, etc., after all that, no one is going to get rich on EUR 90K per year. Not going to starve, but not going to get rich, either.
To present some perspective, as an employer in the US (yes, I realize things are probably different in Germany), if my personnel budget is USD 90K, that means my employee is getting only USD 61K in salary. The rest goes to various overheads that I pay to support the position.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
They also gave money to the Berkeley Earth project. That one didn't quite turn out like they wanted.
They also tried to give money to the Florida State University Economics Department with some provisos:
First, the curriculum it funded must align with the libertarian, deregulatory economic philosophy of Charles Koch. Second, the Charles Koch Foundation would at least partially control which faculty members Florida State University hired. And third, Bruce Benson, a prominent libertarian economic theorist and Florida State University economics department chairman, must stay on another three years as department chairman — even though he told his wife he’d step down in 2009 after one three-year term.
So much for academic freedom.
You realize even taking taxes in to account, most people make a lot less than that and do just fine, right? When you see income reported, it is normally pretax. If you think most people are making more than 90,000 Euro a year, you are really out of touch. That's a lot of damn money, in any country, enough to live well. You aren't rich, but you are doing just fine.
Correct, their donations have no moral basis; they are only doing this because one of them had cancer and they are hoping to ensure their own survival. Gates on the other hand is fighting malaria and other diseases that are of moral concern because people don't need to worry about them.
As someone who has spent a lot of time working around Ph.D. academics, let me clue you in. EVERY US university of any appreciable size whores itself out like this to some collection of rich benefactors/organizations. Mainly because half of the degrees it awards are outright worthless for a career (hard to get alumni donations from the Literature major that has spent the past 10 years since graduation working their way up to local Starbucks manager, or worse, gotten a humanities Ph.D.) and the other half are for jobs that congress and corporations can't outsource fast enough.
Most American universities have long since ceased being about education, and are now primarily indoctrination camps spreading the propaganda and ideology of the highest bidder.
Right, and all those donations don’t even add up to a fraction of the nearly $1B they plan on spending to influence the 2016 election.
If a Nazi donated $100 to a soup kitchen, does that forgive Auschwitz? And don’t lecture me on Godwin!
Interesting thing you mention. Well, our migration was prompted by some theoretical advances; if you look at our slides at DebConf14 you will see some references to papers presented at the EuroCrypt 2012 conference talking about the relative strengths of different keys.
I don't contest that Zimmerman and Koch know how to communicate securely and what it takes, but maybe we are talking about a different threat model. One thing is identity assurance just for the sake of identity assurance, but in Debian we use it as a core infrastructural part: Get hold of my GPG key, and you have potential root access to thousands of computers. Of course, there are human checks in place, and it's quite unlikely you'd get away with yours... But it's possible.
Dude, you're posting on Slasbergers with people who read The Fountainhead as teenagers and it totally blew their minds, and been assburgers types they can't grow out of the mindset.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Another right-wing canard to debunk. Oh well here goes...
For every Soros who is spending money to promote "collectivism" (code used by Ayn Rand-loving sociopathic troglodytes who haven't had a date this century) , there are ten or more Adelsons and Kochs promoting their fascism. It isn't even close dude.
I think it's great that the Koch brothers give to charity, but at those levels, it's like someone who earns $40K per year giving $100 in total to charity each year. Not exactly a sacrifice.
It's even worse because that worker earning $40K per year can't pay for all of their necessities for life on that salary, where the Kochs have already paid for everything they'll ever need.
I don't contest that Zimmerman and Koch know how to communicate securely and what it takes, but maybe we are talking about a different threat model. One thing is identity assurance just for the sake of identity assurance, but in Debian we use it as a core infrastructural part: Get hold of my GPG key, and you have potential root access to thousands of computers.
Holy Hell, I hope you mistyped something!
It is 2015. If you've got a single password (your private key) with root access to that many machines, something is terribly wrong over at Debian.
For THOUSANDS OF MACHINES let me introduce you to the concept of a key vault. You start with your two-factor credentials to the vault, check out temporary credentials for the individual machine's keys or services you need, and use them for the day.
Do not allow your single private key -- no matter how many bits long it is -- to have root access to thousands of machines.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I know it is against the rules to RTFA, but sometimes it is worth it:
As a side point, Stallman is endlessly criticized around here, laughed at, etc. But he inspired Koch to do something really important and that should be recognized a little bit. Obviously Koch deserves massive praise (and funding) because he did all the work, but it also struck me how important philosophical and moral principles can be in making the world a better place because they can inspire people to do the work.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/03/27/democrats-funded-by-billionaires-complain-about-republicans-funded-by-billionaires/
"But if it’s all that terrible to take billionaires’ money then the Democratic candidates and the Senate Majority PAC should give back their billionaires’ cash"
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/04/08/the_lefts_billionaire_outsider_hypocrisy_122196.html
"Who are the Senate Majority PAC’s biggest donors? They include out-of-state billionaires like Hollywood bigwig Steven Spielberg, music mogul David Geffen and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Mayor Mike” donated $2.5 million to the group earlier this year. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the group’s donor list isn’t short on moneymen funding races in states they don’t live in."
Pot... meet kettle.
He is a smelly hippy.
However, he is very intelligent and has a solid foundation for what he's saying.
So while he is somewhat ridicolous, he is also highly fascinating.
You mean donating $100 million to help build up a hospital in New York isn't morally a good thing? Another $100 Million for Cancer Research at MIT. Another $25 Million for Cancer Research at MD Anderson in Huston TX.
Those gifts were spread out over the last 8 years. The Average American gives about 3% of their income to charity yearly. The Koch's made about $10 Billion last year, so reach that standard, they would have had to give $300 Million last year alone. It only looks like they are giving a lot in absolute terms because they are so ridiculously wealthy.
The Koch's are hardly alone in being relative skinflints. The percentage of income given to charity actually rises as income drops. For example, the most destitute zip in my town averages about 7.5%, while the richest gives less than 4% (yes, we are a generous state. Also a poor state). So if it is really charitable giving you care about (as your post seems to imply) then the best way to increase it is to find a way to move money away from the top end of our income distribution, and towards the bottom end.
Math.