GnuPG Project Successfully Completed Fundraising Campaign


    Werner Koch

    Werner Koch, the permanent author and project manager of the GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) project for encrypting and digitally signing information (letters, files, etc.), has successfully received funding to continue working. In addition to crowdfunding, which brought him $ 150,000, he received $ 60,000 from the Linux fund and annual grants from Facebook and Stripe for $ 50,000.

    The project began in 1997 when Koch attended a lecture by Richard Stallman, a famous open source software publisher. Koch took to heart everyone the proposal made by everyone to write an analogue of the PGP program, and in a few months he created the GPG in his spare time. The project became popular first in the Unix environment, and then spread to other OSs.

    In 1999 and 2005, Koch received grants from the German government (Germany is famous for its love of privacy - for example, they banned the Google Street View project in their country). However, by 2010, the grants ran out. By 2013, Koch was already desperate and wanted to stop working on the project - but at that moment the world was shocked by the history of Snowden, and Koch realized that this project should not be abandoned.

    He raised about 18,000 euros on crowdfunding, but this money did not last long - in addition to the two programmers working with him on the project, he needed to feed his wife, a housewife and a child. In December 2014, he launched the second campaign, and thanks to press coverage, it ended more than successfully. Inspired by the successes, Koch, nonetheless, asked everyone not to forget about the existence of other useful projects on the network that ensure the freedom and privacy of citizens - and they also need support.

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