Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who Is Going Broke - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke <comment><USER3> Calling GnuPG "email encryption software" really understates its importance. It's also used in countless applications to encrypt data at rest, and GPG signatures are used to secure the distribution of software. For instance, GPG is an essential part of the package managers of Debian, Ubuntu, and RedHat.

Here is a link to the donation page: [https://gnupg.org/donate/index.html](https://gnupg.org/donate/index.html)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link, just donated!

<comment><USER5> Watching the bar on the GnuPG homepage is pretty encouraging. Since the article was written, we've donated nearly €30k more. It looks like the problem was that people hadn't heard about it, not that we're all too selfish to donate.

I just chipped in $25.

Edit: Over €10k more in the hour since this comment. It's now 2/3 of the way to the funding target.

<comment><USER6> It still progresses, now (21:47 UTC) only 12% left to the target.

<comment><USER7> Target exceeded, and I don't think this even includes the EUR 100k from Stripe & Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently Stripe and Facebook just stepped in to pledge $50K/year each.

[https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960](https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960)

<comment><USER9> That's awesome, but it's weird to me that Facebook, etc. will happily pay a senior engineer a total compensation of $200k+ yet only pledge $50k for the maintainer of a critical tool. Not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth here, just odd perception of the priorities here.

<comment><USER10> Out of interest, what does this senior engineer have to do? Is it C++ or PHP?

EDIT: Someone downvoted me, not sure why, but I am genuinely curious what the senior engineer does?

<comment><USER11> I'd guess that whoever downvoted you thought this was a troll meant to start a flamewar with C++ vs. PHP and whether one or the other is more difficult (read "better" or "a real language").

It's interesting to note though, that Facebook does uses PHP _and_ C++ extensively. And Facebook maintains a large a number of open source PHP _and_ C++ projects. So I suppose that some Facebook engineers are more involved with PHP and some more involved with C++.

But more importantly, I don't think Facebook engineers are bound to a technology. They think about how to solve problems. If PHP is the best tool to solve a problem, they'll use that. If it's C++, they'll use that instead.

<comment><USER10> Ah I hadn't thought of that about the flamewar. I use both languages (now mainly C++ as I don't need to use PHP for the stuff I am writing anymore).

You're right about them using the right tool for the job - their entire HipHop etc. (whatever it is called now) creations to convert PHP to C++ and run a C++ web server are a good indication of this. Good point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been complaining about this on HN before; lot's of startups built chat apps on top of GPG during the whole Snowden thing and Werner can't raise $120,000.

I'm really glad Pro Publica picked it up, but I also think _we_ need to change to way _we_ think about critical software like GPG. The GPG Tools team (GPG for Apple Mail) recently stated they need to charge for the tool in the future because they simply can't handle to amount of work anymore (it's still GPL) — the response from _us_ was nothing but outrage.

// I just realized all of this is mentioned in the article. My bad.

<comment><USER13> >I also think we need to change to way we think about critical software like GPG

Maybe the lesson here is not to license important software under such permissive licenses. Make it open source and free for non-commercial, require a donation if it is used in a commercial product. I don't really see how you can give something away for free and then expect companies to volunteer to pay for it.

<comment><USER5> > open source and free for non-commercial, require a donation if it is used in > a commercial product

Every serious definition of 'open source' or 'free software' says that you can't discriminate by field of endeavour - if you have one set of rules for commercial use and one for non-commercial use, it's not really open source. And the nature of donations is that you can't require them.

That's not to say that you can't build a business model around open source software. You can charge for pre-built binaries, you can charge for exceptions to the GPL license to build proprietary software with it (this is what Qt used to do), or you can charge for services associated with the code (e.g. running a hosted service). You can even technically charge for the code itself, though since anyone who buys it can resell it or give it away, that sounds precarious.

<comment><USER12> Nope.

We call it Free _and_ Open Source Software for a reason. Open Source means the code is open (i.e., you can study it), Free means it's licensed under a Free Software license (it doesn't necessarily mean free of charge).

People usually omit the "Free and" part when they talk about FOSS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open- source_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software)

// Anybody want to tell me why you vote me down? Am I wrong?

<comment><USER14> Almost nobody would call merely viewable source "open source". Certainly not the OSI.

<comment><USER12> I see. I call that free software, because "having access to the source code" is part of free software licenses.

The kind of "open source" I was talking about is source code that is released under a non-free software license. What do we call that?

\---

@alexvoda "it's not really open source" is the part I tried to contradict. I may have been wrong though.

<comment><USER15> > The kind of "open source" I was talking about is source code that is > released under a non-free software license. What do we call that?

"obnoxious".

More seriously, typically something like "look but don't touch", or "proprietary with source available", or "source available under a restrictive license". Microsoft used to call it "shared source", and that term still has those connotations too.

Definitely not "open source", though; that means more than just "has source available".

<comment><USER12> It's common practice in the game industry to license/pay for access to the source code. Whether you end up changing it or not is up to you, but at least you have a choice. This might not be true for Microsoft's "public" source code. I don't know. It looks like we're talking about two very different domains.

The Unreal Engine is an example for this kind of business model on a large scale. KoboldTouch (used to be?) an example for the same on a very, very small scale (less than 5 people). I really don't see anything "obnoxious" about it.

<comment><USER15> > It's common practice in the game industry to license/pay for access to the > source code. Whether you end up changing it or not is up to you, but at > least you have a choice. This might not be true for Microsoft's "public" > source code. I don't know. It looks like we're talking about two very > different domains.

Yeah, that's a very different case. It's indeed moderately common for proprietary software frameworks/engines to include source, so that their paying customers can modify and redistribute, but cannot redistribute in source form (modified or otherwise). That's not any more obnoxious than any other kind of proprietary software distribution, and I wouldn't call it "look but don't touch", though it certainly isn't open source _or_ free software.

The case I'm talking about is software with publically available source, but under a restrictive license that doesn't satisfy the OSI or FSF or DFSG definitions. For instance, many random projects on github that don't bother applying a license, or rar (the archive format implementation), or tarsnap, or the _extremely_ obnoxious JSON license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had no idea this project (and others) had so few contributors. I'd love to be involved in some Open Source project but I always feel like "yeh there's probably millions of people far more talented than me wanting to contribute" and I've no idea how to start. Some people suggest taking a look at the open bug lists for software you use frequently, but on the few occasions I've tried that (python, gcc, and a couple of others) I've ended up digging through lists of tough bugs each with fairly impressive sounding discussions by people who are way more familiar with the whole ecosystem than I am and it's sort of intimidating.

I did manage to do some isolated contributions to Open Corporates ([http://turbot.opencorporates.com](http://turbot.opencorporates.com)) where the community are super-welcoming and very patient, but I've felt a little isolated and like I'm not exactly giving much back. Apologies for the mildly- OT rambling.

<comment><USER17> > I've ended up digging through lists of tough bugs each with fairly > impressive sounding discussions by people who are way more familiar with the > whole ecosystem than I am and it's sort of intimidating.

Sometimes it's small things, like documentation. For example:

[http://bugs.python.org/issue17701](http://bugs.python.org/issue17701)

<comment><USER18> Good point, but you have to admit that the site does not look inviting at all and that a novice has no idea where to start.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/contribute/)

Mozilla is quite friendly and makes it easy to contribute. I've had quite a pleasant experience whenever I tried to make a contribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the biggest problem is visibility for these projects. They need to be louder. In the case of openssl, I had no idea that they were severly underfunded (until heartbleed).

Same for GPG until now. I didn't hear they asked for donations.

And I doubt I'm the only one. So I quickly checked if maybe this was big on HN at a point and I just missed it.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20donation&sort=byPopulari...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20donation&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20fund&sort=byPopularity&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20fund&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20money&sort=byPopularity&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=GPG%20money&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Nope. It's not just me.

If not even the most technical people (that actually know what GPG and openssl are without looking it up) don't hear about this, how are regular people going to find out where to throw their donations at?

I think people would donate if they knew about it. I'm going to send this guy $100 and consider it a license fee, because he deserves it.

<comment><USER21> I'm wondering if there is a meta-donation page that lists a bunch of the most important open source projects, how you can donate to them and their yearly funding goals (and how many developers are being supported).

<comment><USER5> That could be an interesting project for someone. I suspect the hardest bit would be how you determine which projects are most important or most deserving of donations. As soon as money is involved, people will try to game it and spam it.

<comment><USER22> I think the simplest method would be to consider total amount of donated money.

<comment><USER5> As in projects that are attracting lots of donations are probably important? Or as in projects that aren't getting many donations probably need more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder sometimes if this is the legacy that RMS was thinking about. Sometimes, in my more cynical moments, it seems like we have somehow managed to trick a whole generation of programmers into giving "free stuff" to the world, enabling the creation of the very successful mega corporations which have then kept the value for themselves.

Would it be impossible to create some sort of stipend program at FSF? After all the creation and maintenance of software is allowed to cost money under the GPL.

<comment><USER24> > I wonder sometimes if this is the legacy that RMS was thinking about.

No.

Free software was never about no money being involved. In fact, RMS himself used to get a lot of money by selling free software. Back in the day when Emacs was too big for the internet, RMS used to sell Emacs tapes at 100 USD each (with documentation and source code, of course).

In fact, he still thinks that you should be charging money for distributing free software:

        Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for
        development. Don't waste it!

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html)

He also thinks selling exceptions to the GPL is another good way to support yourself. FFTW and Qt are two prominent projects I can think of that did this.

[https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling- exceptions](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions)

The GPL itself is anti-freeloading. We give you the code, you can do whatever you want with it, but if you want to build on top of ours, you have to give back. It's all about levelling the playing field for everyone.

I have really hoped that the current app store model would turn out to be a great way to sell free software. A convenient way to pay, and you can download and install whatever you want. Optionally, you can have a link to the source code.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to be happening this way. I don't understand why not. Perhaps I too am being too idealistic.

<comment><USER25> > I have really hoped that the current app store model would turn out to be a > great way to sell free software. A convenient way to pay, and you can > download and install whatever you want. Optionally, you can have a link to > the source code.

> Sadly, it doesn't seem to be happening this way. I don't understand why not. > Perhaps I too am being too idealistic.

As an indie app developer, I already struggle with people ripping off my apps and publishing them in various app marketplaces under similar or identical names, or taking my web app, wrapping it and charging money for it.

I have to imagine that if I used a free software licence, this would happen a lot more, and I wouldn't be able to issue takedown requests. Someone searching for the name of my app might find five or ten similar or identical looking results and have no idea which is mine. These other results might serve ads, track user behavior, gather personal information or perform other anti-user operations, leveraging the popular reputation my apps have built to do so.

<comment><USER24> I think issuing trademark infringements notices is fine as far as handling this problem for free software.

If people want to bundle "my" GNU Octave and modify it randomly delete the users hard drive, that's ok. Free software allows this. Just don't call it GNU Octave, call it GNU DiskDestroyer or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We are collecting nominations for our DuckDuckGo yearly FOSS donations at [https://duck.co/forum/thread/11753/foss-donation- nominations...](https://duck.co/forum/thread/11753/foss-donation- nominations-2015-edition). The theme this year is mainstream privacy. This seems to fit well and we'd welcome others. Donations will go out soon.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can someone explain why GPG in the person of Werner Koch isn't substantially funded under FSFE?

My first thought was the Software Freedom Conservancy. The only reasons I see for them not to take GPG under their wing are lack of will (but why?), sense of funding priorities (but why?), or the possibility that some GPG constituents would be concerned about associating GPG strongly with a US-based organization.

<comment><USER28> Because this article is misleading. Apparantly, Koch has been subsidized by the german government thus felt no need to be used the FSFE. Secondly, gpg isn't really used for enterprise email, SMIME is or commercial php.

There's a history of Koch that is pretty ugly. He tried to start a consulting company with said government money and seems to have a "pay me to fix bugs" attitude. This breathless "omg must donate now" sentiment dominant here is highly questionable.

gpg should be under and funded by FSFE not via begdonations and german government funding.

<comment><USER29> I have that "pay me to fix bugs" attitude, too. After all, my chosen profession is software developer and one of the things my employer pays me to do is fix bugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Given the general scarcity of talent in the business, it should really be trivial for a high end IT security consultancy to pay Werner a €3000/month (ie. enough to live on, if not extravagantly) retainer to be available ~10 hours a month to consult on encryption matters (or something like that).

I wonder if it all really comes down to "Really I am better at programming than this business stuff." or if there is some unstated dogmatism that gets in the way.

It seems to me there's a parallel to someone like Moxie Marlinspike who's vaguely in the same field, but seems to be doing very well for himself.

<comment><USER31> The task of maintaining GPG isn't principally cryptographic. GPG is one of those classic un-fun projects that the open source community is notorious for neglecting. So the problem isn't finding and funding cryptographic experts to work on it; the problem is finding _Werner Koches_ who are willing to take on the slog of making sure GPG continues to work.

Look at how many crappy, trivially broken crypto messaging systems are posted to HN every year. Some of them even get funded! Nobody _wants_ to work on GPG, which makes what Koch is doing even more important.

<comment><USER30> Whether the work is "principally cryptographic" or not means fantastically little for it's business value, what matters is that the fraction of the value Werner is capturing is almost unmeasurably small. What Werner needs isn't donations, it's a vehicle for capturing some of the value he's creating.

The idea I suggested (a consultancy retainer) is a way of converting his name into cash. At 10 hours a month, his function would mostly be limited to the company being able to say that he works for them, maybe have him join some high-level meetings, more than actually doing programming for clients.

You're in the general security business, you seem to be pretty good at business in general: don't you know someone who could turn hiring Werner and two devs to work on GPG into cash?

<comment><USER31> No, I don't. You can trace some of my open frustration with crappy message crypto apps to this, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For bitcoin donations, you can go to [1], which gives the address as 12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzkEyCpGq [2]. The address is not generated per user, and is dedicated to GnuPG.

[1] [https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.nojs.html](https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.nojs.html)

[2] [https://blockchain.info/address/12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzk...](https://blockchain.info/address/12LKeo24XCzgz6ASSxcUa8BvUfzkEyCpGq)

<comment><USER33> Can someone signal boost this on bitcointalk or other bitcoin communities? They are huge users of PGP. I don't have accounts on any of those sites or I'd do it myself.

<comment><USER34> I have spread the word in bitmessage chans. People there are certainly concerned about privacy and love free software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "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."

The problem, in other words, was that lots of people like me, who depend everyday on gpg and are thankful for it, would have supported it over all these years _if only we had known that its maintainer was barely scraping by on $25K a year._

Kudos to Pro Publica for bringing this to everyone's attention.

</comment><comment><USER36> GnuPG sounds like a prime candidate for Linux Foundation's core infrastructure initiative. [http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core- infrastructure-...](http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core- infrastructure-initiative)

If they're willing to fund a new NTP implementation then they should be able to drop a few coins in the GnuPG bucket too

<comment><USER37> Strange you cannot seem to just donate to the Linux Foundation, you have to become a member?

<comment><USER38> Yes you can: [https://www.linuxfoundation.org/participate/linux- donate](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/participate/linux-donate)

<comment><USER37> Oh my bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In the last hour or so (I think since this hit the front page) there have been approximately €2000 of donations added to the drive at [https://gnupg.org/](https://gnupg.org/), nudging it over €40000.

Please do your part, and keep that bar moving.

<comment><USER40> I gave my 0.02. Ok, a bit more than that, but everything helps. I don't know what I'd do without GnuPG. It has so many uses beyond email...

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> He's been voluntarily cheated. He should take a job, take care of himself (no one else will), and give gpg whatever time he has left, if he has the energy.

<comment><USER42> > He should take a job, take care of himself (no one else will), and give gpg > whatever time he has left, if he has the energy.

In your scenario, what will happen to GPG? The world just loses this essential asset?

<comment><USER43> Sure, why not? His (and his family's) life should be more important to him than you getting to use GPG.

<comment><USER42> I wouldn't say what someone else "should" or shouldn't do, but my point was that the parent's solution overlooked a crucial factor.

It's not an either-or choice; There are solutions that help him and GPG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The problem of reward for innovation is one that goes back a _long_ ways under the market / capitalist system.

The tale of the unrewarded genius is legion, one set of substantiation is presented in Gregory Clark's _A Farewell to Alms_ looking at key inventors of the early Industrial Revolution: John Kay (flying shuttle), James Hargreaves (spinning jenny), Richard Arkwright (spinning frame), Samuel Crompton (spinning mule), Reverend Edmund Cartwright (power loom), Eli Whitney (cotton gin), and Richard Roberts (power loom, machine tools).

Of the list, Kay, Hargreaves, and Roberts died in poverty. Crompton and Cartwright were granted substantial payments by acts of Parliament (£5,000 and £10,000 respectively), Whitney made money through arms sales to the U.S. government, and of the lot, only Arkwright earned significant wealth, half a million pounds, _after_ his patents stopped being honored by other manufacturers.

Invention and information goods fare poorly in economic systems.

Most of us are coloured by the experience of Microsoft from 1980 - 2000 or so, but what is generally _not_ recognized is that _Microsoft as a seller of "shrink-wrap" software was exceptionally anomalous_. Most other pure-play software firms were nowhere _near_ as profitable as Microsoft. Some _technology_ companies had large revenues, but they were often based on hardware (Sun, HP), professional services (Oracle, Price Waterhouse), or both (IBM). Hardware does well, but has a small fraction of the profit margin of software, and professional services -- brains by the bucketful -- is _very_ difficult to scale. Companies which do well at the latter almost always have a distinctly mafia-like reputation (IBM, EDS, Oracle, PWC, Accenture, etc.).

Werner's situation is unfortunate, and I really do hope he finds a way to survive. He's hardly alone, and frankly, the proprietary commercial model has proven highly problematic as well.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've just donated. It's an important project and Werner Koch needs to be rewarded.

I feel that we, as a community, are really bad at supporting some of the opensource projects that powers our infrastructure. I'm not sure what can be done to improve this. Maybe we need a foundation that raises money for those projects and does the marketing needed to remind us to donate.

I for one wouldn't mind giving say 30 euros/month to be redistributed between projects like GPG, openssh, varnish, nginx, openssl...

<comment><USER46> You are right that we, as a community, are really bad at supporting key open source infrastructure. But I also think that relying on donations from individuals like us is a fundamentally wrong model. I don't benefit directly from GPG, but I benefit from many services that make use of GPG and make lots of money off of me.

<comment><USER45> I completely agree that the services and companies that rely on those technologies should also contribute.

But as a software developer, I use openssh daily in my job. I use tmux, I use nginx, I use openssl and a lot more opensource projects and they allow me to make a living. So, it makes sense for me to contribute.

<comment><USER46> I don't disagree at all, but as you say, you do those things _in your job_. It's likely that you also use them outside your job for personal purposes, which is why I agree that it makes sense for you to contribute. But most employees don't (and shouldn't) feel like it's their duty to pay for the tools they use to do their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's a sad day when Farmville can become a billion dollar business and Werner can't feed his kids. I'm curious if he's truly living on ~$20k/year. That seems ridiculously low for life in Germany. Or if he's got other sources of income to bolster that.

Either way, what really needs to happen is companies that build programs off his work need to make a concerted effort to donate to the project. Heck, set aside a small percentage of revenue and consider it a cost of business.

<comment><USER48> I personally know lots of people here in Germany living off 20k/year and less. More would be better, but it's doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> And this is the weird conflict with open source software. OSS is primarily written because somebody needed it and didn't have it. If they have it, and it works, they have no need to write it or support it. Eventually somebody stops supporting it, and then we all realize we're in trouble, somebody forks it and support is taken up by somebody who needs it.

I think this works. It's sad that it depends on exploiting the virtually unpaid work of a few committed die-hards. But basically, it's the only way we can have good gratis software without something stupid like bundling ads, lack of source code or 'services-based' models. It's clear from all the other unfunded OSS projects that corporate sponsorship isn't going to happen unless they're getting something in return.

</comment><comment><USER50> There does seem to be a need for an "Internet fund". Pick 100 of the core free technologies that everyone relies on and pay people to maintain them.

<comment><USER3> I'm really dismayed that the Core Infrastructure Initiative, which was created in the aftermath of Heartbleed to fund OpenSSL and other critical software, has chosen to prioritize _NTP_ , and not GnuPG[1]. Most of the companies that rely on OpenSSL are probably using a distro that uses GPG to securely distribute the OpenSSL package.

[1] [http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core- infrastructure-...](http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/core- infrastructure-initiative/faq)

<comment><USER51> NTP is important as well. If I remember correctly, that decision was made around the time that NTPD was found to have multiple exploits allowing amplification attacks. Given that there are so many publicly available NTP servers, that makes it a pretty important project.

The fact is that all of these projects need better funding. Frankly it surprises me that large multinational corporations that care about security don't just fund these people. The downside risk for them is terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Stallman urged the crowd to write their own version of PGP. 'We can't export it, but if you write it, we can import it,' he said."

"Inspired, Koch decided to try. 'I figured I can do it,' he recalled."

"Koch's software was a hit even though it only ran on the Unix operating system. It was free, the underlying software code was open for developers to inspect and improve, and it wasn't subject to U.S. export restrictions."

Brilliant :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Here are Felix ("fefe") von Leitner's comments [http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://blog.fefe.de/?q=gnupg) Not that I would share his views, but he is a relatively well known German security expert and free software activist (dietlibc). He knows GnuPG pretty well and basically says: Werner, you don't deserve our donations, stop crying, get a day job and maintain GnuPG in your spare time.

</comment><comment> nathan-muir This feels like "WorldVision" for programmers. The wealthy pouring support on the forgotten, decrying the unjust conditions, only to forget about them and return to their normal lives.

Unlike the poor children of the world - Koch's decisions are wholly responsible for his current predicament.

The "market" doesn't care about individuals like Koch, and he chose to continue despite his efforts not being reciprocated/acknowledged.

I'd like to say that Koch should have abandoned the project, and if the market saw that maintenance/development of GPG was important, it would have happened.

However, it's not a perfect world - and there are probably plenty of pieces of critical software installed on our systems that are no longer maintained.

Would GPG have become one of these unmaintained codebases had Koch acted in his own self interest?

Or, would have another organisation/individual funded someone else to maintain and develop it?

</comment><comment><USER54> "He says he's made about $25,000 per year since 2001 — a fraction of what he could earn in private industry"

The developer of git-annex assistant was happy when he received $20,000 on Kickstarter and he said with this money he could dedicate his time on this project for a full year. [1]

Maybe he could also start a Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc campaign so that he could hire another full-time developer? If enough people find this additional workforce on this project worthwhile, it will be funded.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex- assista...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant- like-dropbox-but-with-your-own)

<comment><USER55> Cost of living varies widely. Having no dependents and living in an inexpensive place is great. Obviously, it's better for us to fund people who use the funds as efficiently as possible, but we can't demand that everyone's life circumstances be identical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> It would be really great if you could run an apt-get/yum filter on your server and retrieve a list of donate links for the open source services you rely on.

Ideally, a GPL+donate-what-you-can would really help maintain these projects.

</comment><comment><USER57> The problem boils down to "Really I am better at programming than this business stuff.".

Someone with his talent and expertise should have no problem with getting highly paid consulting gigs. Then he could continue working on GPG in his free time and even use the consulting income for hiring additional programmers to work on GPG. There are quite a few product-based businesses that could be built upon GPG as well (secure email, corporate communication tools, some kind of public-key-based social network come to mind ...). These could be used to support the continued development of GPG itself.

It's of course not as easy as it sounds. Not everybody wants to deal with 'all that business stuff' and that's fine but then by all means find someone who can help you with that part. If you want to change the world sometimes idealism alone just isn't enough. You also have to proactively deal with the everyday stuff like where the cashflow for paying the bills will come from next month.

There's also a problem with the purism put forth by some of the 'free as in freedom' enthusiasts, most notably Richard Stallman, who seem to gloss over the fact that coders have to make a living, too or who even frown upon making money with software altogether. Software eats the world but even RMS can't eat software.

How many successful larger companies come to mind whose business model is based upon open source? Red Hat, Ubuntu and that's about it. If we truly want to avoid dilemmas like this one we also need to think about how to successfully implement sustainable open source business models.

<comment><USER58> Stallman doesn't and has never glossed over that programmers need to make a living. He has no qualms about charging for software and has happily done it himself. He says it's wrong to use licenses to force people into depending on you.

<comment><USER57> Good point. It's not that clear and easy in all cases though. Besides, Stallman once disparaged SaaS business models as unfree and essentially a problem to be dealt with. While that in way makes sense from his point of view, it's problematic for developers who try to make a living with providing a useful service.

I very much agree for all system software and especially cryptographic and security-related software.

What about a developer or a company though that's put several years worth of work into developing a particularly useful novel solution to a specific business problem? If they use a proprietary license they'll at first force others into depending on them once they start using the software but is that really wrong in every case? If on the other hand they immediately release their code under an open source license they might effectively commoditize their novel solution. Sure, they might be able to recoup some of their up- front investment but in most cases this won't be a sustainable business model.

Releasing the source code only to paying customers might seem like an obvious solution but depending on the nature of the software and the industry the customers might decide to just pay once and afterwards sideline the developer. Continued innovation can serve as an incentive to pay for updates but again this doesn't apply to all fields and industries. Licenses such as AGPL might be a remedy, too but from experience I can see that software licensed under these or similar terms is mostly avoided in business contexts. I'm not sure if there's any company that's built a viable long-term business on a dual- licensing model.

Not every closed source (or only partially open source) software product is created with malicious "Let's blackmail the customer into using our software forever." intent. Sometimes, it just makes good sense. However, in those cases I think companies should at least make provisions for releasing the code if they go out of business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think he should start a US nonprofit, or even better start cooperating with an international one, as that would allow people to deduct donations from their income. It's a lot easier to donate if you know that otherwise 30%-50% of that would go to the ever hungry state...

edit: It turns out every EU citizen can deduct a donation to GnuPG from their incomes!

[https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.html#61](https://www.wauland.de/en/donation.html#61)

</comment><comment><USER60> Wow, they have done a pretty bad job of promoting their donation campaign. I use GPG, I love GPG, and I hadn't heard about it.

If they'd done it before 12-31, they could have easily gotten a lot more donations (due to tax year), especially from companies (who IIRC don't need it to be a 501c3).

Helping GPG market itself, especially for fundraising, would be a great way for a non-technical privacy advocate type to contribute meaningfully. I think a lot of those people exist.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is sad but not super surprising. Historically, if you had money and wanted a reasonable UI and cleaner integrations, you bought PGP (now from Symantec). GPG was always for people unwilling to pay.

For the record I donated. I'm just pointing out that writing something that's bundled and distributed as part of something else means nobody thinks about your project, or in many cases even realizes they're using it.

<comment><USER62> PGP went commercial to deal with lawsuits, but it is still open source.

I would like if someone with more understanding of the situation could outline the risks of allowing PGP to be the only implementation.

<comment><USER44> PGP is _not_ open source.

Parts of its source code are _viewable_ and _reviewable_ , associated with key cryptographic functions. Much of what PGP builds is structure around that, and most of that _isn 't_ open in any sense of the word.

Phil Zimmerman (who's long since left the building) _does_ understand the value of source review, and the team who supported PGP continued that legacy. But it was _quite_ limited in scope.

That said, PGP also did work with other implementations, including GPG, to resolve compatibility issues -- I'm aware of a few of those personally myself.

<comment><USER62> Could the unreviewed code be a liability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> For that matter, I don't know what I would do without BouncyCastle: [https://www.bouncycastle.org/donate/index.cgi](https://www.bouncycastle.org/donate/index.cgi)

This article made me think about donating.

</comment><comment><USER64> In the meanwhile, a very funny card game about exploding kittens has raised more than 5 Million USD on kickstarter

</comment><comment><USER65> This is why "free as in beer" is a problem for "free as in freedom." Just to maintain things costs money because people take money to live, not to mention how much it costs to field things that are competitive on UI/UX and other metrics with big closed ecosystems.

<comment><USER66> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004435)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Here's something I think should get more love and is pretty relevant: a service that will automatically pay a percentage of Bitcoin donations for every submission to a GitHub repository: [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/BitHub](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/BitHub)

So if you donate to Open Whisper Systems, you can see that your donations are going directly to those that are contributing to the project, and you get paid more if you're contributing more. I've sent in a few PR's to their iOS repo, and it'd be awesome to see it implemented in other privacy OSS projects. It's obviously not a perfect system, but I think it's a pretty cool way of funding OSS.

<comment><USER68> I'm part of the SymPy project and we opted out of a similar program tip4commit. It's a bit easy to game. If you do it per commit, someone could just break up their work in smaller commits. The same thing with pull requests.

I can see bounties for issues fixed, but a per commit system is fundamentally flawed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Hopefully this article leads to a call-to-arms in the dev community to come up with best marketing/fundraising practices. I know that the idea of meritocracy is very powerful (and not altogether _wrong_ )...but it's a tragedy when great software doesn't get the minimal exposure because of relatively easy friction problems that can be fixed.

I think of all the random, stupid things I've backed on Kickstarter, simply because I saw it on a friend's Twitter feed...things like GnuPG may not get as much consumer reaction as most Kickstarter widgets, but there are enough developers with disposable income who would happily donate to open-source-in- need if such causes were just slightly more visible.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is amazing news. Glad to see companies that benefit so much from free software helping to pay it forward.

 _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._

</comment><comment><USER71> Meta-question, ideally aimed at Daniel if you're reading this, but not interesting enough to email you plus wondering what community members think:

Normally I'd be against comments like "donated" that add nothing else, and would downvote them for that. But in this case, does seeing lots of other people say they've donated make other readers more likely to donate themselves? If so, does that outweigh the negative of the page filling up with otherwise-pointless comments?

I've not downvoted any, but would be interested in any opinions as to whether or not you have/would downvote them and why.

<comment><USER72> I think such comments are fine in this thread. This is an unusual case, and such things don't come up all that often.

If it started to get predictable it would be a different story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I wonder if a patreon-like (or even patreon itself) would be more effective raising donations than just one-time donations. I know enough people that swear by gpg, so it doesn't strikes me as hard finding a base.

</comment><comment><USER74> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpgp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpgp)

</comment><comment><USER75> So I just donated €20 and I invite others to do it as well.

(And they use Stripe for payments, which of course is relevant here on HN. And as a first time user, it was a breeze to donate.)

<comment><USER76> I gave a little €5, but I'll gladly give more when I have more income, I'm still a student :P

I used PayPal and it went like a breeze too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I wish there was a sort of "Patreon for open source" nonprofit service where I can support projects like GnuPG, OpenBSD, etc all in one place.

<comment><USER50> Would Patreon or Gittip (which has changed its name to something I can't recall at the moment) not work for this?

In fact, Gittip's original mission was tips for open source projects.

<comment><USER78> Gratipay. Unfortunately their execution has been a bit poor, and it's under- delivering. There's too high a barrier to start donating and there's no clear option for one-time donations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Would it help if some highly visible figure like Snowden or Poitras weighed in in some interview? I mean, they probably have a lot on their shoulders already but I cannot see anyone else who would be more motivated and more efficient at this task.

I am probably missing something though. They must be somehow aware of the situation already and not consider it a top priority for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER80> The need here is characterized as 'money'. And yes, at a reductionist level, that's the issue.

But perhaps what GPG and Koch really need is management and marketing, to build sustaining, recurring support for the project.

That would involve getting this sort of attention on a regular basis, and asking for financial support in ever-improving ways. Also, having enough structure that key people aren't tripped up by local tax and legal issues, and the project is well-prepared to survive the surprises and tragedies that eventually challenge every longstanding effort.

Sometimes, a precocious developer or development team, or even volunteer advocates in the community, can do this themselves. But also some people have no talent or appetite for self-promotion and support work. The proclivity for these tasks may even be negatively-correlated with the particular technical abilities required in some domains.

GPG doesn't just need a fish today. It needs a fisherman... or fisherwoman.

</comment><comment><USER81> Lack of funds doesn't even sound like the biggest problem here. If the project relies on one guy, what happens when he's gone? Seems like something this important should have a higher bus factor.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

</comment><comment><USER82> Just like many here, I had no idea, and this is so important. I hope HN community will blow up this donation page!

</comment><comment><USER83> This is a terribly injustice, and points to a larger systematic problem, that we software practitioners benefit greatly from the efforts of others to whom we barely offer anything back.

And while the media can help (as in this case) what we should be looking for are systems to help with the situation. My ideal would be a system that monitors my package manager activity, and then using an algorithm I control, allocates "pieces of the pie" to each package I install and use. Then I determine how big the pie should be, and how it should be funded. E.g. if I'm working for a company, I'd request as part of my contract that I get a $200/mo software budget. Or I could just fund it myself.

If even a small fraction of us did something like this, the open-source world would blossom, and injustices like this one would be eliminated.

</comment><comment><USER84> Where can I see the list of all such Softwares (the essential and free) and the people behind them?

Is there a single place where the following details can be found?

Program Name, Company / Group Name, Description of the software, Link to their website, Yearly Budget (Required), Funded so far (out of the total yearly budget), How many people in the team?, Options to donate

I feel that the real problem is that the folks behind these amazing softwares are either too busy / too nice / too shy (for philosophical reasons) to promote, organize, gather funds? And in the busy world, their very existence is forgotten by the rest of us.

If there are none like this, why not we build one and I would like to start it so others can join in later. To help these guys around the year and not just when we get to see an blog post like this one.

Any thoughts / comments ?

</comment><comment><USER85> So, it wasn't a donation, but Snowden that kept this developer going? I'm freaking out a little thinking this implies you can't buy dedication or even good software. Donating is a good thing of course, but it doesn't solve this really disturbing meta-problem.

</comment><comment><USER86> This is a clear example of market failure. When I've been grumpy over the last year over how torrent piracy affects indie cinema (the sector where I work) it's for similar reasons; putting work out there and depending on the goodwill of the public is simply not a viable economic strategy. It's a basic fact of human psychology that people gauge the value of something by what they paid for it, or even what other people would have paid with it and what they therefore feel they're 'getting away with' if they managed to obtain it without paying.

 _In December, he launched a fundraising campaign that has garnered about $43,000 to date — far short of his goal of $137,000 — which would allow him to pay himself a decent salary and hire a full-time developer._

Think of what Koch might be able to achieve if he were in a position to direct other people in addition to writing code, or even to write code without the distractions of a precarious financial life.

Innovators, whether in arts, technology, or whatever sector, do not like relying on donations or shaking a hat in front of people. It's a shitty, degrading way to work. Nobody becomes better at what they do through constant negative reinforcement of their economic inferiority; and yet the notion of even the most minimal royalty obligation or assertion of a private economic interest is enough to bring out glibertarians* in droves ranting about the selfishness and futility of trying to put a price on something that has zero marginal cost of distribution. Digital assets _do_ have zero marginal cost of distribution, but they have significant fixed costs of creation, and the failure to acknowledge that by disavowing the notion of _any_ property interest in digital goods __are undermining the entire market concept in favor of a new variation of serfdom. Saying that society should change and institute a basic income guarantee is all very well, but that 's not going to put food on the table for anyone in the near term (except possibly a few enterprising economic raconteurs who are willing to take up the role of court jester).

One possible option for Koch would be to crank out the next version of GPG; post a changelog of all the desirable new features/bug fixes etc., and then run a Kickstarter to raise the funds that would persuade him to release it - in other words, to withhold the new version until people put their money where their mouths are. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to do that, for 3 reasons: first, many people would just carry on with whatever they currently have, regardless of security liability etc., because what's already available is 'good enough'; two, he'd become the target of the internet hate machine, albeit on a smallish scale; and three, a bunch of indignant people would fork the existing code on Github and offer their innovations for free, a hundred flowers would bloom, and 3 months later 99 of them would have shriveled up and died, while the codebase would have have irreparably fragmented.

What we need is some sort of new economic model that does not force innovators to sacrifice their comparative economic advantage (ie their primary technical or artistic skill, on which they should be concentrating their efforts) on guilt marketing, public beggary, or drafting of grant applications.The copyright system could provide such a mechanism, but focusing only on the cases where it's broken or unfair to consumers has led many hackers and digiterati to throw the baby out with the bathwater, making things _much_ harder on small-scale producers whose interestes the system was instituted to protect in the first place.

* people who identify as libertarians but who have little experience of structural economic disadvantage

 __in the economic sense of things that are literally good to have

</comment><comment><USER87> If your company uses the fruits of this project's labor, your company should probably be reserving at last a little honorarium to the people behind it.

Give directly, or encourage them use something like Gratipay or Patreon or whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER88> The whole commercial industry is relying on open-source components, arbitraging what should cost money in the first place to build a business, then assuming that people do it for the fun primarily (which is not completely untrue), maintenance though costs money, but to give edits back should be the role of the earning community, not the original founder. Licensing might help here, just too many people are offering their works for free (read there will always be somebody with a free alternative). It's kinda weird to expect something else and proclaim free software..

</comment><comment><USER89> Don't forgot to donate to ProPublica for covering an unsexy story as well.

<comment><USER90> ProPublica is the pinnacle of journalism right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Facebook and Stripe are stepping up: [https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960](https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960)

</comment><comment><USER92> Just donated, GPG is quite a critical part of open source ecosystem.

Please donate

</comment><comment><USER93> Just donate, for christ's sake

</comment><comment><USER94> > Like many people who build security software, Koch believes that offering > the underlying software code for free is the best way to demonstrate that > there are no hidden backdoors in it giving access to spy agencies or others.

I'm guessing this is a problem with the journalist misunderstanding the subject, who probably said publishing it as free software (which is not the same as giving it away for free) is the best way to demonstrate that it is secure.

</comment><comment><USER95> I noticed the rather pitifully empty donation bar last week, and made a mental node to chip in a little bit as soon as I could. Donated €5 today, and visited the website again just now and the donation bar is more than full, which is just incredible.

Werner's engagement on the mailing lists is awesome enough, let alone the software he writes. Genuinely glad for the guy that he's getting some of the financial support he needs.

</comment><comment><USER96> Just donated, and you should too!

[https://gnupg.org/cgi-bin/procdonate.cgi](https://gnupg.org/cgi- bin/procdonate.cgi)

</comment><comment><USER97> this is precisely the question I asked here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863782)

This is frustrating - a lot of these projects dont get funded just because of one reason: discoverability. People dont know that these projects need funding. OpenSSH was another. No telling how many others.

</comment><comment><USER98> I think we need a change in the way we look at open source software. It must not necessarily be free of charge. The real benefits of open source are often something other than being free of charge, like in this case. Maybe we need a new licence allowing charge for commercial use and giving benefits or discounts on the amount of contribution made to the project?

</comment><comment><USER99> Hopefully a sign of things to come. Way prefer to give my cash to someone that dilligently works away out of the public eye, but also gets some reward when its recognized. My cynical side says someone will pop out soon and say its compromised and he's had an NSL, but that part of me is killing me so I choose to hope not.

</comment><comment><USER100> GNU is awesome in the way that 'Citizen Kane' is awesome. It is awesome because of what it accomplished given the context in which it was created. The context has changed but GNU, by and large, has not. "Free Software" gave us BSD and Linux, but it is also partially responsible for the privacy issues of Google and Facebook (neither of which would be as competitive if they had to pay licensing fees to Microsoft and Oracle, and they give their services away in exchange for monetizing user data), Heartbleed and similar bugs (these projects are not properly funded for security audits and/or maintenance), and the expectation that one should work for free (if you don't have a job the first thing you do is start working on open source projects to show what you can do). Richard Stallman is arguing for the freedom of software, not people. Unless we change society such that its citizens will be provided for regardless of how they spend their afternoons open source needs a new business model. As software becomes more pervasive finding alternative models will become more urgent. And, it's already very urgent.

<comment><USER101> Thought experiment: if there was no GPLv2, only GPLv3, would the same concerns apply?

Have you come across promising alternative models? These would need to exhibit some properties of GNU-style free software and some properties of cash-cow commercial software. Thus, technical run-time mechanisms for software composition will play a key role in the new legal framework, just as _linking_ (e.g. GPL vs LGPL) did in the GNU ecosystem.

Today we have microservices, containers, etc - which allow composition of software with different licenses, T&C and biz models.

<comment><USER100> just saying, i don't think this guy is going broke for lack of trying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Could he not just change the license to require commercial usage by companies with more than $x annual revenue to pay $y in license fees?

Could still remain open source and free for majority of applications if x was high enough. Also, creates a system where those reaping the most also pay the most.

</comment><comment><USER103> Just announced - "Stripe and Facebook are going to sponsor @gnupg development with $50k/year each." \- [https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960](https://twitter.com/stripe/status/563449352635432960)

</comment><comment><USER104> I've donated to the project in the past, I wasn't aware of just how far in the hole he was until today.

Also, I just cloned the repository and it's a bit of a mess, if anything I'm ashamed that I haven't been doing anything about it directly.

</comment><comment><USER105> Never tell people / managers that you love your Job. That's one foolproof way for people to expect you to do it for free or close to it.

Your payment comes in the form of praise.

I think that was the mistake made here. A mistake made by many artists.

</comment><comment><USER106> Donated 20 euros. It's amazing, in some hours has one from 40.000 to 58.000!

</comment><comment><USER107> It's a bit disappointing that G10code[1] https identity verification fails. May be it makes sense given that he's short on $$$$.

[1] [https://g10code.com/](https://g10code.com/)

<comment><USER108> it's just self-signed.

All that means is that you are transferring trust to the owner of the site, rather than a CA, to properly deal with his own secure key, and that browsers hate it; but who cares about that part.

I trust the GnuPG set of tools, and I have so for quite sometime. On the opposite side of things I have witnessed a _ton_ of CA hacks in recent years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> I would like to repost a comment from reddit[1] that makes some good points:

"That title is pretty laughable.

Enterprise E-Mail Encryption solutions do NOT use gnupg, and most enterprise customers do not even use openpgp, they use X.509/SMIME. I know the world top 10 server side enterprise e-mail encryption solutions and the majority uses java with either bouncycastle or ajak encryption, for PGP or openssl/bouncycastle for SMIME. There are some solutions that use gnupg but those are very small and again - most people do not use openpgp in the business world. Mostly automotive uses it like Porsche, VW etc. for encrypting e-mail traffic. Gnupg is mostly used for e-mail by your skilled engineers in private or while communicating with kernel developers etc. Either by using enigmail/mutt/command line whatever.

Nothing based on e-mail would "break" if gnupg went missing.

Now lets get back to Mr. Koch - gnupg was sponsored by the German Government - in all these years - Mr. Koch tried to build a consulting company/enterprise solution out of it - but he failed because there were already existing solutions that were far better than anything he could come up with. Moreover asking Mr. Koch to fix specific bugs in gnupg which was as i said sponsored resulted in simply "pay me XXX amount or i wont do it" \- thats how Mr. Koch worked.

Ask any code auditor/reviewer worth his salt and he will tell you gnupg is a mess, it is worse than openssl in most cases - why ? Ask Mr. Koch.

I just want to remind everyone carefully judge, before thinking about donating to Mr. Koch or his company. I already noticed he received well over 50k today just because of this false article.

This guy got funding multiple times from the german government for implementing and maintaing gnupg. This was never a fulltime job - <USER2> patches and a few features is what any open source developer does in his free time. Mr. Koch tried to build a business upon this government funded software, and it failed. He already had multiple fundraisers in his careers to keep his company going. Does he deserve your money ? It is not like gnupg would be dead without him - he is not the only one doing anything - there are many developers in the community who are doing their share too.

Arent there other things more deserving of funding than the failed economical existence of one guy ? An open source developer that wants to contribute free software does not need your money to survive! Did Mr. Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds ever beg people for money because they cant buy their next meal ? Did the BSD Foundation plea to you they cant make days end ? No - they never did - and they still were able to produce free open source software.

Mr. Koch does not deserve your money, if anything successors of him should receive funding if they need to - but not to survive - because they most likely got a real job already and doing this in their free time. "

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2uw2gt/the_worl...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2uw2gt/the_worlds_email_encryption_software_relies_on/coc9qxv)

<comment><USER110> I tried to submit a patch for GnuPG that would enable it to use "proprietary" PKCS#11 smart-cards instead of "open" OpenPGP smart-cards. Line of though being, users may already have S/MIME generated keys on their smart-cards, so why not use the same keys with PGP too? In the end, a key is just a number.

The request was refused [1] with ridiculous arguments [1] about PKCS#11 not being "needed in free software world".

After that, I started playing with S/MIME and found out it was much more user- friendly than GPG. (After the initial setup.)

[1] Here you can find links to relevant threads: [http://zvrba.net/software/gpg_pkcs11.html](http://zvrba.net/software/gpg_pkcs11.html)

<comment><USER111> It was not about proprietary smartcards but about the proprietary driver software required to use those smartcards.

If the vendors would open the specs of their smartcards it would be easy to write a driver. Some did and we support them in GnuPG. Most of them don't and we may even assume they want to hide their little secrets in their drivers. It is all the same as with all the proprietary hardware drivers. Look at decades of LKML for similar discussions.

<comment><USER110> Sorry, I don't buy this. PKCS#11 is a standard, wide-spread, user-space API for accessing cryptographic tokens, just like POSIX is a standard API to access operating system services. I guess it's about the time to write a "driver" for each supported OS instead of relying on libc, because the user's installation cannot be trusted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Donated.

</comment><comment><USER113> So why not hire the guy to work on this as a full time employee? Stripe / Facebook / Google or even Mozilla should have the money to hire him as full time and only work on GnuPG.

</comment><comment><USER114> I wonder if his software would be more well known if it were more useable? I've tried using it on a few occasions over the past 10-20 years and have had a very hard time doing so.

</comment><comment><USER115> Just donated 50€, hopefully the goal of 120.000€ will be exceeded!

<comment><USER34> The goal is now exceeded! The progress bar is even overflowing the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> No one pointing to the fact that GPG has major issues like no perfect forward secrecy? Are we celebrating that big-brother money is funding a (out)dated technology??

</comment><comment><USER117> This is an epitome that corresponds to Peter Thiel's thesis statement: contribution to a society and (financial) reward are independent variables.

</comment><comment><USER118> Unbelievable that this article gets this guy a paycheck. He deserves it but it's still amazing. We live in the future.

</comment><comment><USER119> I like his office setup. Dual monitors, raised base for monitors, plexo? lamp, white board, real keyboard.

<comment><USER120> IBM Model 30. One of the few keyboards that doubles as a melee weapon. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> I donate to the EFF regularly and would really like to see them put some of their money towards this.

</comment><comment><USER122> Why is there no Kickstarter equivalent for ongoing open source projects instead of just new things?

</comment><comment> the-tesla-809 Is there some hacker group online that specializes on Crypto that can donate time and or money?

</comment><comment><USER123> when I first saw this post on HN, the donation was around 60% of the goal. Just now I see it exceeded 120000 € of the goal. I bet HN readers donated a good amount today after reading the top-trending news. Great activism!

</comment><comment><USER124> "Mihai'); DROP TABLE Donors" (from the donors page) is an asshole.

</comment><comment><USER125> Donated...

</comment><comment><USER126> Its ok, he got like 200k in 24 hours so he's good now.

</comment><comment><USER127> By itself, Google could pay that guy's salary and even hire another dev to help him. Red Hat could do the same. In fact there are any number of companies that can step in and do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER128> Just donated and you should too... ;) Great project!

</comment><comment><USER129> I am sure if he quit someone would pick it up.

</comment><comment><USER130> Gave him 5$. Thanks HN for showing this.

</comment><comment><USER131> big shout to the journalist that actually reported the issue instead of vaporware shenanigans. @JuliaAngwin

</comment><comment><USER132> The funding target has now been met!

</comment><comment><USER133> This shouldn't be odd to anyone who's spent a large amount of time releasing open source. You just end up being used and uncompensated. At best you get a job offer from it.

It's really sad to me how many companies benefit from open source (including my own software) without the author ever being compensated.

It's hard for me to get motivated to do anything open source anymore because of the feeling that I'm just a gullible idiot in the end.

The feeling when I fix issues opened by people at VC-backed companies with millions of dollars is really really nasty. I always feel like such an idiot.

<comment><USER134> The question is, have you asked for compensation? And, there are plenty of devs at those evil VC-backed companies that give a lot in terms of open source contributions. Those millions of dollars aren't being used to buy private jets; they're paying salaries to devs just like you.

<comment><USER133> Are you talking about job offers or are you saying that companies cut checks to open source devs at the behest of requests for some money? Who does this?

If you're talking about job offers, you can get jobs _without_ spending off time doing open source. I look over at my co-workers who probably make similar salary as me and they don't do much open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> No worries, I'm sure everyone contributes more to their respective governments to break encryption than they'll every send to anyone seeking to protect it. Send more money to this guy if you want to feel better about your shitty (respective) country or self. Better yet, just donate to the EFF like a uselessly trendy dweeb. Being a decent citizen isn't about standing up for what's right or wrong (that makes you a terrorist), instead it's about sending money to your respective, government-approved cause.

</comment><comment><USER136> The question is the wrong one. The better question is: why does so much software choose to depend on an underfunded library?

<comment><USER10> Because they can get the source and not have to pay a penny for it? For businesses, that's a good selling point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> why doesn't he watch some youtube videos on lean startups, write a business plan and raise some VC money?

<comment><USER138> Probably because he's good at writing code, not writing business plans and raising money.

<comment><USER139> That, and there's unlikely to be a compelling story for VCs here. There are many _many_ projects that are great and valuable to humanity and yet are not VC fundable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER140> But wait, I thought fame and accomplishment and helping lots of people were supposed to be enough for software authors, that somehow making people pay for software was evil, that it's OK if everyone just copies your source code and uses it, that an Open And Free Internet would be self-sustaining?

/sarc

<comment><USER141> Making people pay for software might still be evil, but supporting software with teaching how to use it, documenting it, publishing books about it, making conferences, supporting it is what I think is a reasonable way for oss spirited souls to make money.

SQLite comes as an example - while completely free, public-domain, what might (I don't know for sure) be making money for the three people behind it is the extensive test suite, various other extensions (compression, security) and possibly support/integration/customizations for specific needs (less memory/cpu usage, or who knows what..)

I'm also amazed at Mike Pall's luajit's effort, and he keeps his sponsors page here: [http://luajit.org/sponsors.html](http://luajit.org/sponsors.html)

I've never used directly GPG, but since I'm debian/ubuntu user I've donated money after reading one of the posts here.

<comment><USER142> Making people pay for software is _not_ evil. It is _not giving those same people the source code_ that is evil.

This is because by not giving them the source code you are keeping your users under your thumb and not allowing them the freedom to improve their lot.

<comment><USER140> [https://developer.apple.com/xcode/downloads/](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/downloads/)

Free. Improve your lot however you like.

<comment><USER142> How does Apple figure into this? I did not mention Apple, I was countering the parent's FUD, which also did not mention Apple.

<comment><USER140> Just one of many obvious examples that plenty of tools are available "allowing them the freedom to improve their lot." Nobody is stopping them, nobody is "keeping your users under your thumb". Improve your lot? do it yourself, or pay the engineers accordingly.

Oh, sure, Apple et al can change their minds and charge outrageous fees and demand outrageous licensing terms. Nonetheless, lots of affordable tools are available.

And before you take the opposing view any farther: I come from an era & mindset of building advanced computers from scratch. I reject the argument you offer of "by not giving them the source code you are [oppressing them]", because I'm trained in building computers starting from _sand_ , and writing software starting with toggling in op codes with manual switches. I've written format converters (with no guiding documentation) to overcome the bounds you imply.

If you want someone to put in the effort to create complex software, maybe you should understand that they should be paid for that effort - one price to use it, and a higher price to get the detailed source code. If you're paying the price of a few cups of coffee to use it, heck yeah you're not getting the complete body of work a team spent years creating.

<comment><USER142> Rhetorical question: If nobody is stopping them, there is no harm in giving them the source code, right? So why don't you?

> _I 've written format converters (with no guiding documentation) to overcome > the bounds you imply._

Please do not assume that everybody should be like yourself.

> _If you 're paying the price of a few cups of coffee to use it, heck yeah > you're not getting the complete body of work a team spent years creating._

There's an easy way to rectify this – just don't call it _selling_. Call it _renting_ , which is what it practically is. The thing which I get when I buy software today is by no practical definition my property: its utility is deliberately limited by the manufacturer, and I am both legally and practically prohibited to extend that limit or repair it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER143> Let's send him some money directly: [https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/werner- koch-deserves-to-get-p...](https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/werner-koch- deserves-to-get-paid)

<comment><USER144> Why is that better than the GnuPG donate page: [https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html](https://www.gnupg.org/donate/index.html)?

<comment><USER145> It worked well for me when I donated.

Looks like this is working, the number is way up. A little advertising goes a long way.</comment></comment></comment>


Cheapbugs: Mailing list for App and Web security bugs - <AUTHOR> http://cheapbugs.net/#home <comment><AUTHOR> From Shmoocon Firetalks 2016, check the talk here: [https://youtu.be/tksYvAVKqxM](https://youtu.be/tksYvAVKqxM)</comment>


The U.S. of Comcast: Follow the $19M in Lobbying [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/video/the-u-s-of-comcast-follow-the-19m-in-lobbying-yqyeB7qqTkC4eilGZDqJCw.html

<comment><USER2> When he took office I seem to recall President Obama saying something along the lines of stopping the revolving door between congress and the lobbyists.

President Obama's biggest failure is that he's too much like former President G.W. Bush.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the Kinks sum this up nicely:

"Eyes down round and round let's all sit and watch the moneygoround"</comment>


Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/Game_Engine_Black_Book_Release_Date/index.php <comment><USER3> We've buried this thread ("announcement of an announcement") so that we won't have to mark a later discussion as a duplicate when this is actually released.

<comment><USER4> That seems like a self-inflicted problem. Why would you have to mark the future thread as a duplicate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On of Andre Lamothe's less popular books is Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus. It documents building a Wolf3D style ray caster.

[https://books.google.com/books/about/Tricks_of_the_Game_prog...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Tricks_of_the_Game_programming_Gurus.html?id=WkAf_tgF19MC)

</comment><comment><USER6> I built a 2.5D engine back in about 2006 with SDL and C on OSX. It worked (eventually) and taught me a lot. It wasn't particularly clever but had collision detection and textures, the latter stolen from Wolf 3D of course. It's a valuable experience as a programmer.

What I never managed to understand was how they managed to get the performance they did out of the hardware. Mine crawled at a miserable 8fps at 640x480 on a 2GHz Core 2 Duo iMac.

Performance is where the magic in this really is! Can't wait for the book.

<comment><USER7> They didn't use SDL for a start ;)

SDL is great but it's not in the same league as the hand-rolled & optimized code they used.

Different goals.

Great job tho! That's not an easy project!

<comment><USER8> With VGA you write directly to video memory don't you?

The only extra indirection SDL adds is that you write directly to system memory instead, and then SDL copies that to video memory for you when you swap buffers.

Like the person you're replying to, I've also never seen how copying 640x480 bytes from system memory to video memory can introduce such a bottleneck. What's the bandwidth between the two? 10 Gbps or something?

There must be more to it than SDL overheads.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, perhaps SDL graphics primitives other than surfaces were used. These are notoriously slow implementations. Or the code was not in C/C++ and messed up the garbage collector or had huge overhead memory allocating.

<comment><USER6> I can't remember how exactly I did it but the entire thing was written to a surface in a massive for loop per-pixel (C was used) and then flipped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks very interesting!

A. It's terrific to see people really dig into some of these early technical achievements while they're still fresh in our collective memory - <USER2> tend to inspire creativity, and I think we all like reading about those creative solutions.

B. Modern embedded systems like Cortex-M processors can probably take some design hints from these projects which were developed on/for machines with very limited resources. I was thinking of looking into writing a simple emulator on one, maybe for the [S]NES or an early Gameboy (if anyone knows a good resource...?). It'll be super cool to get an in-depth window into how "3D" was managed without niceties like a programmable shader pipeline. The best that ARM-M chips seem to get is a dedicated memory controller for LCD interfacing, some SIMD operations, 2MB of 'bitband' memory that is rapidly addressable on a bitwise basis, and sometimes a display accelerator for single-cycle pixel operations in higher-end models.

<comment><USER11> I've been reading the Michael Abrash's Black Book, and it was quite eye opening, especially when working around serious limitations of the old hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have been waiting for this book to get released, so I'm very excited that its getting released this month. Wolfenstein 3D is why I learned C.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wolfenstein 3D source is here - [https://github.com/id- Software/wolf3d](https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d)

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know why does 2.5D ray-casting perspective in Wolfenstein 3D look so much better than a typical 3D perspective (usual matrix)? When you turn around staying on a single spot, walls aren't changing their size in Wolfenstein 3D, whereas they do in any 3D FPS...

<comment><USER15> 3D games use a rectangular perspective projection - they project the scene to a 2D rectangle. Problem is that the FOV (field of view, zoom) is not correct unless you put your head very close to the monitor. This leads to distortion. For example, if the FOV is 90 degrees, you need to put your eye (will only be correct for one, of course) centered in front of the display at a distance that's exactly half the width of the screen (draw the triangle). Obviously that's extremely uncomfortable so we pull back and deal with the distortion.

Working around that with a fisheye projection has other issues, like straight lines in 3D ending up curved on the screen, and is a bit more computationally expensive, though not too bad these days. It's free in Wolfenstein-style 2.5D though (although Doom chose not to do it).

<comment><USER16> Of cause projections themselves don't have to be restricted to the geometric planar case: [https://github.com/shaunlebron/blinky](https://github.com/shaunlebron/blinky)

and don't miss the explanatory part further down: [http://shaunlebron.github.io/visualizing- projections/](http://shaunlebron.github.io/visualizing-projections/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the thing that amazed me about wolf3d engine in retrospect is that it uses mipmapping. I dont know if the mipmap level of a vertical segment was computed based on the u-coordinate derivative but my guess is that it could do that quite easily thanks to the raycasting algorithm.

<comment><USER18> I don't think there was any mipmapping in Wolf3D. That wasn't introduced until Quake.

<comment><USER17> See, this is unbelievable. There _is_ mipmapping in wolf3d.

<comment><USER17> Oops epic fail. There doesnt seems to be any.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/world/a-renegade-trawler-hunted-for-10000-miles-by-vigilantes.html

<comment><USER2> This is an amazing article, that is crying out for a big budget feature film. I wonder whether authorizing the work of efforts like this would justify bringing back Letters of Marque: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque)</comment>


No RAM upgrade path in new Macbook Pro - <AUTHOR> http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120611_4-MacBookPro-soldered-memory.html <comment><AUTHOR> Basically, if you're ordering a new MBP, you'll probably want to get the full 16GB right out of the gate.

</comment><comment><USER2> I believe this is the case with Macbook air too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know about the non-retina MBPs?</comment>


Synesthesia: The Sound of Style - <AUTHOR> https://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/2018/08/29/synesthesia/ <comment> s-shellfish This is cool, but it's not synesthesia. Synesthesia is literally a neurological phenomona. I have it, and it's very real. It's not simply an algorithmic encoding.

<comment><USER2> I think you missed something. It's not claiming to be synesthesia, but it is inspired by it.

I've never known anyone with it, what is it actually like? I am colorblind and I experience some colors as a visual vibration. I assume this is also not synesthesia, but it does help me pick out certain colors that I don't see as different from another color.

<comment><USER3> When I listen to music I see colours in my head. Different keys have different colours.

Personally I find

Gm is a dark reddy brown

A is red

Am tends to be deep purple or bluey red

Bm is blue

B is greeny yellow

C is yellow

Cm is dark yellowy green

D is a bright happy green

Dm is a dark bluey green

E and em are different shades a light blue.

It's hard to explain but one is kind of darker feeling. E has more of a whiter tinge to it.

It's all kind of subjective though. It really depends on the son and the instruments used. Each instrument adds it's own texture and variation to the colour.

I dunno when I listen to music it's like a moving painting in my mind that changes with the different parts of the song.

It's one of the reasons I would like to try mescaline. It's supposed to give you visual synesthesia.

Also, as a side note. I'm also colourblind. Not too had, i don't really notice it much in my day to day life but I fail the red green colour tests and i'm not very visually artistic. Part of my job involves mixing colour and I usually need someone to double check and see if it matches properly.

I love music though. I've been playing musical instruments most of my life and I dunno I find music helps relieve stress for me more than a lot of things.

<comment><USER4> What happens when a note is off?

<comment><USER3> Depends. Different tones outside of the normal musical keys have colours they just tend to be less distinct, more blends of other colours' incorrect notes in the middle of a performance are kind of like someone taking random colours and throwing them on a painting.

I dunno it's hard to describe, the overall key of a song provides...uh the background colour I guess...while the actual notes and chords played are where the actual pictures come from. So a note from the wrong key or something is the wrong colour. It just kind of sticks out in a bad way from the rest.

I dunno. I'm sorry if that's kind of vague and unclear. It's a hard thing to describe. I never really thought about it until I started to get serious about learning music theory. I just always could guess when two songs were in the same key by their colour, but didn't actually know what those keys were.

It's not always straightforward, even the tempo makes a difference and different modes or even intervals can be different. Lower octaves are usually darker than higher ones. I really wish I could explain it better.

<comment><USER4> I think it's a pretty good explanation of a very strange phenomenon. It makes me wish I could experience it. I'm pretty tone deaf, and it took me years to figure out how to even tune my guitar properly (the breakthrough was being able to feel the vibrations through the neck of the guitar).

Do you get anything from the drums?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone with synesthesia, "typecasting" one sensory experience to some other sensory experience is not the same thing at all, and will almost certainly be considered the "wrong" result by anyone with synesthesia. That sound does not make that shape/image and vice versa.</comment>


Prettifying Org Mode with CSS - <AUTHOR> https://sandyuraz.com/articles/orgmode-css/ <comment><USER2> With some configuration it is possible to _work_ with these styles while editing in Org mode, including the use of variable-width fonts, inline images and formulas, etc. The configuration[1] describes an exemplary process.

It is also possible to tweak the Org mode export mechanism to modify its structural markup to fit projects such as Tufte CSS[2][3].

What the article doesn't explicitly mention is that #+HTML_HEAD: is an instance of In-buffer setting[4]. These can be either added to individual files, or more conveniently, to a reusable _Setup file_ many files could point to (specified by the #+SETUPFILE: in-buffer setting).

1\. [https://lepisma.xyz/2017/10/28/ricing-org- mode/](https://lepisma.xyz/2017/10/28/ricing-org-mode/)

2\. [https://github.com/dakrone/ox-tufte](https://github.com/dakrone/ox-tufte)

3\. [https://jnboehm.gitlab.io/blog/tufte- css/](https://jnboehm.gitlab.io/blog/tufte-css/)

4\. [https://orgmode.org/manual/In_002dbuffer- Settings.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/In_002dbuffer-Settings.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking at the screenshots and the CSS in question, and presuming that before it just wasn't specifying fonts at all, I prefer the "before" result if I'm the consumer, mostly because I like the fonts I set in my browser, and consider Inter and Incosolata a slight regression. Also most of the other styles I disagree with; capping the width and reducing the line-height for headings is about all I actually agree with in there.

But really I think that if this is all you want to change with org-mode HTML output, it must export pretty decent HTML. (I'm not familiar with it.)

(Analysis of the things I particularly don't like: 1.6 is too large a line- height; I prefer #000 to #444, though I'd settle for #222; image should use max-width instead of width, and have height: auto added, and what's with the 700px instead of 900px, especially if you're not going to block and centre it?; border-radius on images seems a bad idea; I dislike gratuitous fiddling with ::selection colours—only touch it if you have actual brand colours that you're making it align with, like [https://wesbos.com/](https://wesbos.com/), and be cautious even in that, as is demonstrated in the .highlight on that page which thwarts selection styling.)

<comment><USER4> Org mode html export is clean by default, yet customizable.

I like that the outline is represented in the dom as nested elements instead of a flat representation. Title, status, tags, properties, description, code and code output are well separated and easy to select through path, I'd and/or class.

Something I enjoy is the "narrow to sub tree" feature that allows to export a nice html rendered export from a part of the document.

<comment><USER5> I have been using that feature to keep all my uni assignments in the same file. Although I export to LaTeX and not html. Though I can export it as a single large webpage with all the assignments on, and it mostly work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I mostly prefer the layout of the after, for its added vertical spacing. The one thing I really don't like, and don't understd either, is that they've made the font grey instead of black.

Grey on white has less contrast than black on white which reduces readability - I doubt it can ever _increase_ readability. It's basic human physiology - probably basic physics.

So an open question to all those who describe themselves as UI/UX experts - why do you do this?

<comment><USER7> About grey on white, it is said to decrease eye strain. [1]

[1] : [https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use- pure...](https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure-black- for-text-or-backgrounds/)

<comment><USER8> In my experience, this is completely wrong. I always strain _more_ to read gray text on white background, no exception. I really wish this trend stops.

A darker background, on the other hand, can be helpful in some situations.

<comment><USER9> > In my experience, this is completely wrong. I always strain more to read > gray text on white background, no exception.

I can't know for sure, but it's pretty likely your experience and your observations aren't quite aligned. If the contrast is too low (such that you notice), it can certainly cause more strain. But it's often the case that almost-black registers as black (and almost-white as white) and you don't even realize that's what you're seeing.

<comment><USER8> That's the entire problem with this theory. The designer does NOT know what my computer screen renders. Not every computer is a Mac with a 400+ nits display or has the same contrast ratio. The optimal "gray" therefore varies across screens.

In my case, anything above #333 is capable of producing problems, the range #333 to approx. #444 is problematic with thinner font weights and anything above #444 is easily, noticeably terrible with anything except heading weights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the CSS included for the lazy:

        /* Originally from http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com */
        @import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Inconsolata|Inter&display=swap');
        body {
         margin: 40px auto;
         max-width: 900px;
         line-height: 1.6;
         font-size: 16px;
         color: #444;
         padding: 0 10px;
         font-family: 'Inter', sans-serif;;
        }
        h1,
        h2,
        h3 {
         line-height: 1.2;
         font-family: 'Inter', sans-serif;;
        }
        img {
         width: 750px;
         border-radius: 10px;
        }
        pre {
         font-family: 'Inconsolata', monospace;
        }
        ::selection {
         color: white;
         background: #ff4081;
        }

</comment><comment><USER11> Org mode by default just uses your user agent stylesheet. Adding some CSS is trivial, so just write your own damn styles instead of adding a sandyuraz.com dependency for no reason.

Adding interactivity on the other hand is more involved. I recommend org-info- js which is what I use with my journals. [https://orgmode.org/manual/JavaScript- support.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/JavaScript-support.html)

<comment><USER12> You seem offended someone provided some styles that help along with an easy way to integrate them.

One could easily copy those styles, extend them or host it themselves. Why the vitriol?

<comment><USER11> I would be supportive if the advice is "copy those styles, extend them or host it themselves", not adding a dependency that's bound to be broken sooner or later. There are way too many bloated, slow, or broken websites due to linking to random blurbs from the internet.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if this was added later, but it says exactly that...

 _or just use the bare CSS as a starting point to make your own (everyone has their own style)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was looking for an Org-Mode type solution for vscode, and was surprised to find that it's basically no longer being actively developed! [1]

Really surprised by this. I would have thought there would be at least a small and thriving community of people that want to use org-mode, but with vscode. What gives?

[1] [https://github.com/vscode-org-mode/vscode-org- mode](https://github.com/vscode-org-mode/vscode-org-mode)

<comment><USER15> You can use Emacs just for org mode even if you use vscode for coding.

<comment><USER16> And once there, you can also code in emacs too. Imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > That's why I prefer Dior

What does Dior mean ?

I usually use bootstrap css when I have to publish: [https://github.com/marsmining/ox-twbs](https://github.com/marsmining/ox-twbs)

<comment><USER18> I think the author refers to the fashion house Maison Dior: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dior)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like the ReadTheDocs one [https://github.com/fniessen/org-html- themes#readtheorg](https://github.com/fniessen/org-html-themes#readtheorg)

</comment><comment><USER20> Prettifying org mode _export_

</comment><comment><USER21> Two notes:

\- [https://orgmode.org/](https://orgmode.org/) \- Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, planning projects, and authoring documents with a fast and effective plain-text system.

\- The main style element here is the max-width setting. The original bare HTML of the 1990s was mostly read in 640 by 480 pixel 14 or 15" CRT screens, with the most fortunate using workstations with megapixel 19" screens. Document width at maximum window size was fine then.

<comment><USER22> Hmm, I don't think I ever used a resolution lower than 800x600 in the 90s, and mostly used 1024x768. (Although I only really started being aware of these things in '96 or so)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It does make me wonder if the web would have been better off if we had stuck in the direction of personalised styling and simply vended html and nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting, but i've found the html output of orgmode to be maybe too opinionated. For a project that i've been trying to launch for a few months now (can't find the time and with covid-19 and no schools for kids is even worse), I wrote my own org parser and html exporter in clojure. The result is a semantic html output that looks gorgeous with mvp css[0]. I'm planning on releasing this as OSS but need to find time to fix a minor bug in the link parser.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

[0]: [https://andybrewer.github.io/mvp/](https://andybrewer.github.io/mvp/)

</comment><comment><USER25> There is a solarized version as well which I've used a few times in the past. [https://thomasf.github.io/solarized-css](https://thomasf.github.io/solarized- css)

</comment><comment><USER26> The "before" looks so much better! I really dislike the second layout.

<comment><USER9> Then don't use this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> FWIW, Nikola, and probably other static-site generators support Org mode as well.

<comment><USER28> I'm successfully building sulami.github.io from org-mode using Hakyll, though my setup is quite complex due to my requirements (e.g. PDF output).

<comment><USER29> I've been trying to do PDF output, from a webpage, basically the saving the output of CMD-P and save as PDF.

Do you have a good method for this?

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't call it good, but I'm using Pandoc to generate LaTeX. The whole thing is wrapped in Hakyll, which already uses Pandoc to generate the HTML from the source (org/markdown).

Feel free to dig through the source if you want to see how it works: [https://github.com/sulami/sulami.github.io](https://github.com/sulami/sulami.github.io)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Australia's economy is a house of cards - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@matt_11659/matt-barrie-australias-economy-is-a-house-of-cards-6877adb3fb2f <comment><USER2> As an Aussie, a very confronting read. You're kind of aware of various problems brewing on the horizon, that China's demand for iron ore is low, that our housing costs are too high, and therefore mortgages / household debt are too high, all of this. But then when you weigh it all up the feeling of being in trouble is very real, and we've had 6 years of flaky leadership that's too worried about political maneuvers to worry about these structural problems.

There are some things that give me hope though. We've built a number of great marketplace startups, including Freelancer (where the author works), Envato, 99 designs etc. So that's a strength, and the tech scene in general has grown massively in the last 5 years. Our mining industry might be in the slumps but we pioneered some pretty great drone tech, self-driving tech, and remote operations stuff. And if you get creative with remote work and global teams, the timezones we're in can be seen as strategic assets.

There are smart people here. But like most other liberal democracies, we're really divided and have a large voting block that just wants to keep the status quo and isn't being honest about the challenges. But hey, we just voted yes to marriage equality so the electorate has some hope left.

<comment><AUTHOR> As an Englishman living in Australia for 6 years, its become clear over time that people here just don't really seem to care that much about what's going on outside of their own sphere.

The "she'll be right" attitude has its merits but I can't help but be concerned that the country is sleepwalking into rough periods.

The overarching reliance of the government on tax (from tobacco, to pokies, to cycling fines) that the author touched upon is truly worrying when there aren't really any solid earners for the economy. And that's without even addressing the real estate horrorshow that's going on around us. Uber drivers owning 8 properties?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As an Australian 16 year old I feel a bit fucked.

<comment><USER2> If you're reading HN as a 16 year old I like the chances that you'll be entrepreneurial enough to make your own way even in a bad economy. Either just finding the opportunities locally, or creating things for a global market, or packing a bag and going somewhere more promising. If you're willing to keep growing / hacking / changing, and especially if you have tech skills, you'll probably do a lot better in a downturn than much of the rest of the country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The focus on real estate as the means to wealth is spot on. It's essentially the go-to retirement strategy for essentially every Aussie I've met

</comment><comment><USER5> Previously posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691154)</comment>