The donations thing could be true, but Truecrypt simply wasn't a donation-friendly project. It was developed in almost total secrecy, with binaries and code be

The donations thing could be true, but Truecrypt simply wasn't a donation-friendly project. It was developed in almost total secrecy, with binaries and code being tossed over the wall once in a while, provided under a non-OSI license. I built it from source a few times, but Truecrypt was used by a lot of people, far beyond the developer community, people who totally lacked the technical skill needed to compile it. SO it's a safe bet the majority just used those binaries. And those binaries actually changed without warning more than once, independent of the version changing. That alone bred suspicion and fueled the demand for an audit. The behavior of the developers (and their total lack of a public presence, regardless of the reason) may have also discouraged donations. Same with the behavior of the forum moderators, whoever they were.