Protect your privacy - Help GnuPG hire a second developer!

on: 2014-12-16

GnuPG is the world's leading privacy tool, with an estimated base of more than four million active users world-wide, and a thousand new users each day. It guards emails, files, and programs from snooping and spying on Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux. This crucial program needs your help to keep going in 2015 and beyond.

Ongoing government spying revelations have shown how little of our information is really safe. GnuPG is one of the few tools that can offer real protection. Edward Snowden used it to encrypt his communications with journalists. All companies and individuals running Free Software systems use it to protect their software against manipulation - sometimes without even knowing about it. Credit card data and backups are routinely encrypted through GnuPG, and the program will be needed for many years in the future to restore that data.

GnuPG this is free of charge for all those people around the world, but it costs money to develop and maintain. For more than a decade, g10^code GmbH, the company owned and headed by GnuPG's principal author Werner Koch, has been bearing the majority of these costs. The company is seeking EUR 120,000 to carry on its work on GnuPG in 2015.

With this money, the company will:

hire a second developer to work on GnuPG
maintain the GnuPG software and documentation
put this vital bit of our privacy infrastructure on a more solid organisational footing, so that it will remain viable in the long term.

There are no fancy fundraising videos or goodies. Every cent of your donation will directly support the future development of GnuPG. Donors will be listed on the GnuPG website and in the next GnuPG release, unless they choose to remain anonymous.

You can directly donate to the GnuPG project through this page:

https://gnupg.org/donate/

If you can benefit from a donation receipt by a Germany charity you may donate to the GnuPG account at the WAU Holland Stiftung:

https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.html#61

Wau Holland Stiftung
Commerzbank Kassel
Königsplatz 32-34
34117 Kassel / Germany
IBAN: DE89 5204 0021 0277 2812 06
BIC: COBADEFF520 or COBADEFFXXX
Stichwort: GnuPG

Bitcoin: 12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzkEyCpGq

The Wau Holland Stiftung will use the money raised to pay for development work on GnuPG and Enigmail.

In a blog post, Werner Koch has provided an overview of GnuPG's costs and revenues over the years:

https://www.gnupg.org/blog/20141214-gnupg-and-g10.html

Media contact:

Werner Koch, primary GnuPG developer, g10^code:
Email: wk AT g10code DOT org
Phone: +49-2104-173855
Karsten Gerloff, President, Free Software Foundation Europe:
Email: gerloff AT fsfe DOT org
Phone: +49 176 9690 4298
Bernd Fix, Wau Holland Stiftung:
Email: bf AT wauland DOT de

About Wau Holland Stiftung:

WHS is a foundation related to the Chaos Computer Club, that was launched by the father and close friends of the late "information philosopher" Wau Holland (a.k.a. Herwart Holland-Moritz) to promote and pursue his unique freethinking in relation to freedom of communication and informational self-determination.