4 ms·
> It's encouraging to see the GnuPG project benefitting from similar largess. But it also raises the question: how is the money best spent? However the heck th
by andrewstuart2 12y ago
> It's encouraging to see the GnuPG project benefitting from similar largess. But it also raises the question: how is the money best spent?
However the heck they want to spend it. These are donations. If the guy has been working so hard just to make the world a better place and he wants to disappear with the money, I'd be bummed and I imagine lots of other people would too, but they were donations. A "thank you for busting your back for so long", not a "hey, now you've made it to the big leagues, better saddle up (the way I want you to, by the way)."
We've been using this software (probably worth many millions a year in the private sector) for free for how long? At least for libgcrypt, the initial commit was November 8, 1997. 17+ years ago.
That said, what are the chances this awesome, passionate developer is going to deliberately drop this project he's poured blood, sweat, and probably some tears into? What are the chances that he doesn't labor over the decision on how to spend the money, and consult his peers?
I sincerely hope this doesn't turn into some donation-gate fiasco where everybody's miffed about how the money that was freely donated got spent. This guy has changed the world and deserves to take the money as thanks and not added responsibility. He's already been shouldering that responsibility for years.
- PuffinBlue 12y agoHear hear!
- alecco 12y agoI'm more concerned he might mismanage the money. He seems like a really nice guy but seems to have no great business/finance perspective. Still, he is free to do whatever the fuck he wants with my small donation. I feel like I owe him a lot more than that.
- sumitviii 12y agoWhy does he need a great business perspective to spend something which is nowhere close to what companies using his hard work are earning?
- avn2109 12y agoThis. The article says Google and Facebook each gave him 50 big ones. Which != 0, but I can't help but thinking that's like .00001 seconds of Google profits, given to a project that is probably on the critical path of >50% of their business.
- tobinfricke 12y agoGoogle's profit was $13G in 2013, according to Wikipedia. Thus $50,000 amounts to about 2 minutes of their profit stream. You are off by seven orders of magnitude... More to the point, how do you figure that GPG is on the "critical path" of 50% of Google's business?
- Estragon 12y ago> More to the point, how do you figure that GPG is on the > "critical path" of 50% of Google's business? Anywhere they're using a debian-based linux distribution, they're using gpg in the package management.
- tobinfricke 12y agoThat's true, but it says nothing about how difficult it would be to replace.
- Estragon 12y agoDo you have any idea what be involved in that replacement?
- _ak 12y agoIt's not like the first time he's handling money like that the GnuPG development. In the past, he received two separate grants for exactly that by the German government, and he even employed developers for some time.
- O____________O 12y agoYeah, I hope he sees a minimum of $500k - $1mil, which is about representative of what he'd have accrued spending that much time at a regular, somewhat modestly-paid tech job.