[Cryptography] The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke

[Peter Vils Hansen]

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 5:09 PM, Arnold Reinhold <agr at me.com> wrote:
>
> ProPublica is running a story about Werner Koch, author and maintainer of GPG, who is "is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.” He received money from the German government in the past to do a Windows port, but lately has relied on various ad hoc fund raising efforts that have only raised about $21,000, not enough to support his wife and 8-year old daughter. Props to Julia Angwin for a well-written piece.
>
> We are really skating on thin ice.


He should be good now, with a promised $100,000 a year from Facebook and Stripe:

Update, Feb. 5, 2015, 8:10 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 flooded
Werner's website donation page and he reached his funding goal of
$137,000. In addition, Facebook and the online payment processor
Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a year to Koch’s project.

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke

Peter.