GPG Email Encryption is in the hands of ONE man. Literally.

[Skylyne]

This is one depressing headline to see, as security enthusiast- The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke

Feel free to discuss. Personally, I'm just going to cross my fingers on some funding. I can't even afford an apartment, let alone donate to help the best thing to have ever hit the internet.

edit: this wan't intended to be a question... that was my bad

 

[USAFRet]

Going broke? Not so much.

From the first update paragraph:
"awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. "
"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."

 

[Skylyne]

You did realise that the funding came in AFTER the article was written, right? Also, I hope you also realise that the total amount he raised is not going to last for very long... It's also quite a small amount he's been given, in reality. Sure, $100k is fine for a single programmer each year, but to expand staff, keep updating regularly, and possibly go into other areas he likely desires to venture into, this is pretty minimal. Most fund raising platforms are requiring a fair amount of buffer room, but they don't pay for much outside of the end goal. That total of $297,000 sounds like a big pay day, but only a third of that is recurring (annually, mind you), and that isn't very much extra funding for such a big project. Kickstarters have raised way more than this for truly stupid products.

Another thing to remember is that this kind of headline should never have existed in the first place. Consider the fact that ONE man is literally in charge of the entire world's GPG email encryption... it wasn't a major company, and it wasn't a group effort... it was a guy going broke, making around $25k/year, for the last 14 years (what the title is referencing, for those who completely ignored reading the full article).

I want to see a lot more funding than just an initial $300k... something like this should have at least a fair number more heads being volunteered, and at least a million in funding, should it be necessary. This isn't some cheap web browser ad blocking extension... this is probably more important than SSL could ever be, IMHO.

 

[USAFRet]

You did realise that the funding came in AFTER the article was written, right?

Yes, I realize that. It states it right there.

More funding is never a bad thing. But let's not go over the top with the scare headlines.

 

[Skylyne]

You're blaming me for a headline that I didn't make... insinuating that I actually intended for this to make people freak out... seriously?

It should be a wake up, for everyone. This kind of headline should never have existed to begin with. Call it a "scare headline" if you want, but the fact is that it was completely true when it was written. Are you going to write news papers, asking them to update every headline that has ever been run, to prevent people from thinking it's still relevant? If people choose to not read the article thoroughly, then that is on them... not the people who write the headlines, or those who share them.

Again, this headline should be more of a wakeup call for everyone. Unless you approached the article as a pure sceptic, looking for any reason to say it isn't true, it should at least perk your ears up, and make you wonder "why?" for a minute. That's the job of the headline for an article; it draws people in, so they actually read everything that was written.

Just because the article was updated, the headline shouldn't be modified because, quite obviously, at the time it was written, it was entirely relevant. Take it up with the website who published it, and tell them to change the headline. All you're doing is basically saying, "don't worry, he isn't broke, everything is fine." In reality, even with all that funding received, it's still a low budget for such a large project. In fact, even with that kind of funding, he is still kind of going broke... if you want to compare it to the funding for other major products/services currently used. If he had a corporation that was running this project, people wouldn't think that $300k is that great...