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GPG Programmer Werner Koch Is Running Out of Money

Posted by timothy on from the open-secret dept.

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..)

2 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wrong Koch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Academic freedom on a US campus? Yah, ok.

  2. Re:Wrong Koch by zapadnik · · Score: 1, Troll

    Actually it is Billionaires like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Thomas Steyer, and the Wall Street cronies who are all Democratic Party donors because the the Democratic Party has no problem with using political control over the economy. The Establishment Republicans are bad, but at least have a veneer of Free Market principles (which means, citizens free from Government interference, which is what this is really about).

    The Tea Partiers are the only real ones in the US who oppose the revolving door of cronyism and government corporatism. Of course, the media doesn't want you to know this, which is why so many Slashdotters get in a lather based on propaganda rather than listening to the economic arguments of the Tea Partiers, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, etc who all oppose the distortion of the marketplace that Government brings, with the distortion of the political space that corporatism (which is only possible through Big Government) brings.

    The only solution is Limited Government. A Limited Government can't hurt its citizens, can't fund massive deficits and can't enable cronyism. This is what the US Founding Fathers wanted, and why the Tea Party was actually formed (most Slashdotters believe the Tea Party is what the Extreme Left says they are, and confuses prudent fiscal conservatism with social conservatism when they are not the same at all).