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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..)
Too bad, I know of two of his relatives who have more money then they know what is morally correct to do with.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
from GPG founder Werner Koch
Hal Finney is the guy who built GPG; Hal Finney is also the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction, which was sent by Satoshi Nakamoto.
From the linked article:
Update, Feb. 5, 2015, 5:55 p.m.: After this article appeared, Werner Koch informed us that last week he was awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. Werner told us he only received permission to disclose it after our article published. Meanwhile, since our story was posted, donations have also poured into Werner Koch's website donation page to the tune of nearly $50,000 so far.
Can't he just sell support or something? Isn't there supposed to be viable funding models for FOSS projects?
Can't he just go to the Koch Bros.? /ducks
Something everyone claims to want, but too cheap to pay for. Thanks, Stallman!
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Open source software is generally accompanied with the idea that it should be given away, although the two aspects are technical unrelated.
Often the people behind it end up underfunded with only the occasional VC passing by raking it in.
Such is life in the give-away world!
Looking at the list of donors page, it has this curious summary:
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.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
Michelangelo finished the pieta in 2 years. You've had 18!! Look, it's good stuff, and you could probably milk this till retirement. Even Michelangelo realized finally that if he took one more swing at his sculpture, he'd have detracted from it.
You keep this up, you're gonna turn out just like that Torvalds kid.
If more people used it, he would get more money. I am pretty good at writing user documentation. I thought about writing some for gpg4win, so non-techies could use it. But then I took a look at it more closely, and it seemed hopeless.
like...really, really watch very closely.
Reimplement it in systemd where it can live forever.
an ill wind that blows no good
Like so many encryption schemes it is still too difficult for the man in the street.
Take another look, knowing that Koch now has funds to pay a decent writer.
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.
Then like that Indiana girl scout, he'll be raking in the dough. Bonus points if he had it happen while walking seven miles uphill in the snow to get to his computer.
Then none of us have to worry about anything else in the world except the next episode of Downtown Abbey.
He could actually go out an get a job if he wants.
Is that known as "scratching the Koch"? How do we know Koch won't blow the wad on hookers?
20 euro for you
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
How soon we forget someone who stood up. Someone who should be honored for his contributions to free speech, expression and privacy,
Besides, isn't PGP Snowden used?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Kinda makes you wonder if his last name runs donors off.
To a lot of the people who would like to support a lot of this stuff but without any full knowledge of the subject, the Koch name now is pretty toxic alone due to the the brothers and all their misdeeds.
It's not that hard to use, there are GUI tools for gpg use on all platforms. Heck, I created my old key using GPA (gnu privacy assistant) a GUI interface to gnupg, since I couldn't get enough entropy on the command line. (As an aside, I created that key on a Playstation 2 Linux kit) I was/am no genius either. GPG4Win uses Kleopatra to interface with gpg, which is nice. Take a look at the PDF documentation on the gpg4win website
http://www.gpg4win.org/documen...
Stop working on the project. 1997 and still writing patches? Obviously it is a piece of shit.
rawr! i'm metadata monster!
that can happen with free, open source software.
nothing to see here.
I'm running out of money too, if anyone wants to send some to me that would be great!
- Bill Gates
I switched to S/MIME because of the easy ability to have a third party sign your key, and the recipients recognize it; utilizing a similar web of trust that we use for SSL. Sure it isn't perfect, but it's a good platform. All the major mail clients support it as well. Unless you're really worried about privacy, it's good enough.
However, I feel it's the duty of large corporations that profit from the efforts of men like Werner Koch to hire, retain, and support these people, and allow them to freely continue their research. If not through employment, then through grants.
<joke>I guess he shouldn't have sold all his Radio Shack stock</joke>
Sig: I stole this sig.
A new high for Slashdot
... political retards foam at the mere mention of someone named Koch. Never mind the guy is a big name in computer security and has nothing what so ever to do with it. This is supposed to be slashdot. Not the huffington post or whereever your fucktards came from.
On topic, I definitely think someone should partner with him. If he wants to go it alone and stay solo then... there is a price for that. Being alone means you're alone. However, his name and experience would lend some value to one of the larger encryption pushes. I'm sure one of the bigger tech companies that feels they need to boost their credibility in security could fund him for a song.
We'll see what happens. I wish the fellow well and more importantly hope that strong encryption becomes a bigger part of the way everything is done going forward.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Interested users could even set up regular donations.
I feel sorry for him. However, donating money to him would probably mean dire consequences. I have a family, I can't take those risks.
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.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
Cry me a river. This guy has been working for free while corporations have been making billions by exploiting "open source" (remember, it's not free software, it's open source!). That's the one flaw in the "open source" - why would anyone give away their labor while corporations exploit what they do to make billions?
"The Koch brothers are not literal fascists;"
Yes they are.
You may be thinking they aren't literal *NAZI*s, which may be (probably is) true, but go look up the definition of facist, and Kochs are facists, literally. Or do you not know what literally means?
I gave the guy $10. I doubt the NSA gives a shit who donates money.
Fact is people use his software to help blow the whistle on tyranny and oppression all around the world. Regardless of what you think of him, his business practices, or even if you're retarded enough to think he has something to do with the Brothers Koch, the fact remains that keeping these tools alive to further the cause is more important than your petty political or armchair-MBA opinions.
This story should be marked as SOLVED! http://news.softpedia.com/news...
Meanwhile, since our story was posted, donations have also poured into Werner Koch's website donation page to the tune of nearly $50,000 so far.
Enough to make Monty Python's merchant banker puke a little. Won't somebody think of the threat to impoverish those poor bankers?
So when can we log into Slashdot, among other sites, using our GPG key (GPGAuth etc.)?
S/MIME is a standard. GPG is software which supports PGP/MIME, S/MIME, and other standards. I think you may be confused.
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.
Quote: "If there is one nightmare that we fear, then it's the fact that Werner Koch is no longer available," said Enigmail developer Nicolai Josuttis. "It's a shame that he is alone and that he has such a bad financial situation." If it's so open-source then why does it rely on a single person? This reminds me of the Heartbleed bug with underfunded developers. Open-source doesn't mean more security.
lol, you created it on a PS2 and you'd like to think of yourself as an average user?
Maybe not an average user, but I had zero experience with Linux or GnuPG before that, and I figured out how to do it.