GnuPG Donation Campaign

GnuPG Needs Your Help!

- For the past 20 years, GnuPG has helped protect online - communication. - Cindy - Cohn, Executive Director - of the Electronic Frontier - Foundation (EFF), describes GnuPG as "the way that - I most often communicate with people who are in need - around the - world." Sheera - Frenkel, Foreign Correspondent for BuzzFeed News, - relates: "As a news organization, we're trained - on using GPG. "It's about your sources and what - happens to them when you leave the country and you publish - that explosive story and the government is looking for the - whistleblower that handed you that key piece of - information." And famously, GnuPG was Edward - Snowden's tool of choice to securely communicate with - journalists about the NSA mass surveillance leaks. -

- But, GnuPG is not only used to encrypt - email. GnuPG protects software updates - for nearly all free software operating systems, which - power two-thirds - of all servers on the Internet. And, GnuPG is widely - used by organizations and companies. For instance, Arthur - Jordan, Vice-President of - Information Technology at 2U, told us: - "when we reached out to universities about how they - wanted to do secure file transfer, they were already using - GPG encryption." -

- Yet, despite the critical role that GnuPG plays for - journalists, activists, and lawyers in particular as well - as anyone who uses the Internet in general, in 2012 GnuPG - had a funding crisis. Due to a lack of - contracts, Werner Koch, GnuPG's lead developer, was forced - to lay off the only other person working on GnuPG - full-time. And, by 2014, Werner had to take side jobs - unrelated to GnuPG to supplement his income. -

- The situation looked so bad that Werner was ready - to give up. But, friends convinced him to give a donation - campaign one last shot. The response was - amazing. Not only did he receive enough money to fund - himself, but he pulled in - 250 000 euros in small donations, and - Stripe, Facebook and the Linux Foundation each committed - to donating about 50 000 euros per year. -

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- The GnuPG Team at OpenPGP.conf 2016 -

- Given this amazing response, Werner decided to - grow the team again. To date, he has hired 5 - developers, and the past two years have seen a number of - improvements to GnuPG and the surrounding ecosystem. For - instance, we've worked - on simplifying - key discovery, adopted a set - of Python - bindings for GPG, contributed some improvements - to Enigmail, - and - supported the - Gnuk project—a free source and free hardware - security token. -

- We want to continue this work in the long - term. But, we want to do so in such a way that - our first loyalty is unambiguously to the general public. - This means making sure that a majority of our funding - comes from individual donors, and not corporations. - Further, to ensure long-term stability, our focus is on - recurring donations and not one-time donations. -

- Our primary goal is to get donation commitments - for 15 000 euros per month—enough to - fund 3 developers. We can reach this goal if - just 2000 people donate 5 or 10 euros each month, - the equivalent of just 2 or 3 cups of coffee. -

The Gnuk Token

- This money will firstly allow us to continue our - maintenance of GnuPG. We also intend to use it to fund our - work on the Gnuk security token. And, one new project - that it will support is a book called "An Advanced - Introduction to GnuPG." A book for developers who want to - integrate GnuPG into their programs, and need to - understand the various concepts, the important security - tradeoffs, and common pitfalls; for digital security - trainers who need to understand GnuPG to be able to make - sound recommendations to users; and, of course, - for enthusiasts. -

- Our stretch goal is to double this number of - donations. If 4000 people donate just 5 or - 10 euros each month, then we intend to grow the - team, and dedicate them to helping other projects in the - GnuPG ecosystem. One project that we really want to - contribute to - is GPGTools, which - many activists and journalists rely on to secure their - online communication. We want to make sure that GPG - integration in Apple's mailer is supported as soon as a - new version of macOS is released. -

- Now, maybe you don't use GnuPG to encrypt your email. - Nevertheless, some journalists whose work you value rely - on GnuPG to protect their sources, some activists fighting - for a cause that you sympathize with rely on GnuPG to - protect their communication, and some lawyers speaking - with their clients rely on GnuPG to help protect - attorney-client conversations. And, free software-based - operating systems use GnuPG to verify software updates. -

So, if you are convinced as we - are that this work is essential to protecting democracy - and privacy, then please help us to continue our - work and stay independent.

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+ Donate 10 € a month +

+ 5 € a month

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What we intend to do

Maintenance

Our first priority is to ensure continued maintenance - of GnuPG. This entails reacting to bug reports, dealing - with security issues, and staying current with best - cryptography practices.

Gnuk

The Gnuk - is a fully free software and open schematic - security token developed by Niibe. We want to - invest more in its production and - distribution.

Book

We want to improve documentation. One major - project in this area is a book that we have - started to write called An Advanced - Introduction to GnuPG, which will explain how - GnuPG works as well as best practices. It is - targetted towards digital security trainers, - programmers integrating GnuPG to their - applications, and enthusiasts.

Greater Ecosystem

Few people use GnuPG directly. Instead they - interact with it via some tool. We hope to better - help these tool developers improve GnuPG - integration. In particular, we want to make sure - that GPGTools, - the GnuPG plug-in for Apple's mailer, works as - soon as a new version of macOS is released.

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