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..)

Comments

No, he's not

[Ydna]

Looking at the list of donors page, it has this curious summary:

In 2015 we received 2535 donations of 87299 € .
In this year we received 2826 donations of 97255 € .

I'm not sure how to read that as this year is 2015. But if this is all for one person, they don't seem to be hurting for funds now.

Re:Latest update

[chihowa]

It's funny that you should mention that. Werner Koch still uses a 1024D key for email. In fact, nearly everyone at g10code.com either has no key listed or uses 1024D. Most of the people involved in the development of GnuPG use ancient 1042D keys.

It's not just GnuPG, though. Phil Zimmermann only uses 1024D.

Perhaps there's something we're missing?

Re:Uhhhh

[CRC'99]

I hate to say it - but most people who do OSS work for the masses don't get paid for it.

I do packaging for Xen used from hobby users through to Disney - yet I get about $400AUD per year in donations. I also have to go buy my own test hardware (I need UEFI kit atm!).

I understand exactly what Werner means and the challenges faced - but I too don't see a solution for this. OSS has been linked for too long as a 'free solution' - which means nobody puts a currency value on the software and services that are made available to the world. I think its the mental relationship of OSS being 'free' causes it. Nobody blinks an eye to pay $100 for a Windows license - yet go for a $10 donation to an OSS project and people lose their minds...

Do not mix up FOSS and running a business so fast!

[HnT]

Note this part of TFA:

For almost two years, Koch continued to pay his programmer in the hope that he could find more funding.

So he is also a business owner making bad decisions and pays employees doing programming for him. Are FOSS projects not usually run by not financially dependent-on-each-other volunteers and on code submissions? It seems to me GPG has failed to establish something other projects have successfully done: a tightly knit community in which the whole project does not rest on the shoulders of one man alone. It seems Mr. Koch was trucking along on government funding alone and had no other source of income, this feels like another bad decision to me. This whole project feels like a very strange mixture of FOSS and running a business based on it while expecting to be paid as if it was a closed source, shareware program.

By all means, he deserves all the donations he can get but maybe it is high time to take a step back and look at how some things might have been run badly and how to improve on that.