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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..)
from GPG founder Werner Koch
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 $50,000 so far.
That guy sucks. I will give him money when he gives me that back door I've been asking for.
Open source software is generally accompanied with the idea that it should be given away, although the two aspects are technical unrelated.
Often the people behind it end up underfunded with only the occasional VC passing by raking it in.
Such is life in the give-away world!
Looking at the list of donors page, it has this curious summary:
I'm not sure how to read that as this year is 2015. But if this is all for one person, they don't seem to be hurting for funds now.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
Wrong. PGP was created by Phil Zimmermann and Hal Finney was the second developer they hired. GnuGP is an open-source reimplementation of the PGP standard written by Werner Koch.
He is more likely to get money from the ducks I think.
s/GnuGP/GnuPG/.
Can't he just sell support or something? Isn't there supposed to be viable funding models for FOSS projects?
He does sell support.
However, I suspect he's been offered many contracts and never knew about them:
There is something I'd like to do with GPG that isn't a standard yet. I'll have to remember to scrutinize Thunderbird's settings before sending him a solicitation.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Too bad, I know of two of his relatives who have more money then they know what is morally correct to do with.
You mean donating $100 million to help build up a hospital in New York isn't morally a good thing?
http://freebeacon.com/blog/koch-brother-donates-money-to-hospital-liberals-protest-not-a-parody/
Another $100 Million for Cancer Research at MIT.
Another $25 Million for Cancer Research at MD Anderson in Huston TX.
Then there are donations to the Arts, National Museums and believe it or not *environmental* projects which are on record...
Yea, these Koch brother guys are the surge of the earth all right, spending all that money on such bad things...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Thunderbird won't send HTML messages unless you configure it to do so. It's plain text by default.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
iEYEARECAAYFAlTUEuwACgkQnludVzJNqF3w5wCfRu8HX2sBa1lR/W6CS4gUao45
K7gAn22FGqPkAX2BH3s0PYa5JqTgM5vy
=H6cw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
like...really, really watch very closely.
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.
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!
20 euro for you
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The goodness of their philanthropy does not excuse their usurpation of the 'Democratic Republic', the USA. They are part of the reason the US is now a Corporate Oligarchy!
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.
I love how everyone claims to have a monopoly on morality.
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?
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Funny, in my experience it's the people who aren't blessed with Asperger's syndrome who are particularly prone to pontificate on the basis of choir-pleasing ass-pluck.
Perhaps we should really rename it obsessive factual reality disorder.
Furthermore, a great many people who read The Fountainhead at a young age and found it mind blowing went into politics. How I wish more of these people had enough Asperchlorians in their bloodstream to balance their own chequebooks.
Got a source on that? I'd like to cite it to a few people.
Remember that Werner's native language isn't English. I think the PDF version of the Documentation is fairly good. The HTML version...could use a bit more work on the navigation interface.
http://www.gpg4win.org/documen...
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...
You forgot the friendly closing:
Sincerely, The NSA
That would have made it slightly funnier.
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).
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 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
Except if you put it in systemd, then it becomes confined to Linux. Side note, GPG gets used across quite a few platforms (I see OS X, Windows, and VMS listed on the binaries page, and seems to be good on other Unix systems too), so it makes for a great utility for others to be able to use to verify whatever.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
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.
No, sorry. I promise it's true though. I read it on a Slashdot comment.
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.
Asperchlorians
My new favorite fake word.
Not to unseat my favorite real word: quintessential.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Asperchlorians
take note: coined today!
#loveit
Interested users could even set up regular donations.
> Stallman is endlessly criticized around here, laughed at,
Have you ever seen him live? I have.
Besides, he is usually not laughed at here. That is the scary part.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Assburgers is often used as a means of indicating that someone does not in fact have Aspergers Syndrome, but is merely acting like an ass.
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.
If you want to see what a healthy combination of as free as possible market and government protection for the underclass does, go visit northern Europe. Both fundamentalists views on the economy (pure communism and libertarianism) lead to disaster.
From a taxation point of view, Greece is a libertarian heaven. Your point being?
No, Captain Obvious, because we already knew what he meant.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, there are four brothers. The youngest two are twins.
Long story but interesting: http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
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
Are you implying that northern Europe is a disaster? You should visit Greece and Sweden, you'll see a great difference.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
really? considering almost all their money goes to support folks who push for exactly all those things, I think I'll be using revealed preferences to figure out what they really believe, rather than listening to the PR spin.
"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...
So really we should be paying him instead of this Koch character then. Sounds like this prick is trying to steal Stallman's thunder.
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.
Love it. Two AC's assigning themselves authority. Each contradicting the other. Neither providing a jot of sourcing. Probably both the same guy.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to provide some links to evidence of said "revealed preferences" instead of just typing out talking point PR?
I'm not a fan of the Koch brothers but no one is all evil or all goodness and light. I disagree with the Koch's political spending, but we can still acknowledge the good some of their charitable giving does. As a parent of small children I've noticed that focusing solely on the negative behaviours does nothing to prevent it, while a more balanced approach seems to get better results.
It isn't even close dude.
https://www.opensecrets.org/ov...
Actually it is close, and it's only in the most recent election that Republicans took the lead in fundraising. I expect this is largely driven by the general lack of progress on social issues and the outstanding progress towards a police state we have made.
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Gates is only doing this in case he contracts malaria!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Maybe not an average user, but I had zero experience with Linux or GnuPG before that, and I figured out how to do it.
Claws-mail defaults to plain text too...because it can't send HTML e-mail by design. It can display it just fine, but never sends it.
Also, I'm really tired of seeing the 'attachment' icon on pretty much every e-mail I get.
You would see the attachment icon if I sent an e-mail to you, I use PGP/MIME and sign all e-mail, the signature appears as an attachment.
wait, you are so ignorant of the candidates the Koch brothers have supported in the last 3 election cycles you actually need someone to show you each candidate and their stance on the above policies? I am including the PAC money and which candidates it is deployed to support as well, of course.
Maybe you should actually start opening your eyes to what different candidates stand for. You seem to have fallen for the theory as compared to the political realities.
Here is what 3 minutes of searching did. Both Tom Cotton and Joni Ernst have said the Koch brothers funding was instrumental in getting them elected.
Both supported and continue to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Both are strongly against gay marriage
But if you have a list of candidates who were well supported by the Koch political machine that actually opposed the wars, the drug war, restrictions on gay marriage, and civil asset forfeiture, I'll happily reconsider.
Interesting - I wonder why GNUTLS is a depedency (I'm building it from source on IRIX right now, no GNUTLS (currently built) on there). On the GPG website libksba is listed as optional, and npth is listed as 'you don't need it but probably want it'.
I'm all for replacing a lot of GNU software because of issues like that. Tying to build it manually ends up being a nightmare, because a lot of it depends on other GNU software they you may not want on there for various reasons.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Kmail defaults to plain text as well. In fact, a lot of its design seems to indicate that its authors use mailing lists quite heavily...
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.