Tag Archives: gnu

GnuPG website and infrastructure

GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is the GNU implementation of the OpenPGP standard which is widely used for encrypting/decrypting email, disks, and other data. GPG has been around since 1997 and is a widely used and well-trusted project.

The crowdfunding campaign was conceived by Werner Koch, longtime author of GPG, and Same Tuke, of the Free Software Foundation Europe. It bundled several goals under the name ‘website and infrastructure’, including the 2.1 release, a brand new website designed to be more user friendly with new servers, mobile friendly design, anonymous Tor access, and updated documentation.

The campaign reached 100% of its ‘optimum’ goal within 26 hours.

Summary

  • Campaign: Independent (goteo.org)
  • Campaign date: 2014-02 (closes 28 February, 2014)
  • Campaign status: open
  • Campaign backers: ?
  • Campaign raised: €? of 21655
  • Project type: existing
  • Project license: GPL

Outcomes

TBC

Commentary

Mediagoblin

MediaGoblin is a “free software media publishing platform”, a free alternative to many popular sites: YouTube (video), Flickr (photos), SoundCloud (audio) and the like. It aims to support truly decentralized publishing and sharing. It was borne from a Free Software Foundation meeting in 2008, recognising the lack of response in the free software space to popular commercial web-based media hosting and sharing sites. Minor releases were made up until October 2012 when the crowdfunding campaign began. There was a stated aim to reach v1.0 by the end of the campaign-funded development period.

The campaign reached over 70% of its goal amount, but as the campaign did not follow the “threshold pledge” model of Kickstarter, it has still enabled significant work to be completed. Chris Webber, the main developer, chose to work on MediaGoblin full time for a year (as was the aim of the original target). Webber previously worked as a software engineer at Creative Commons.

Summary

  • Campaign: Independent (FSF)
  • Campaign date: 2012-11
  • Campaign status: partially successful
  • Campaign backers: ?
  • Campaign raised: US$45198 of 60000
  • Project type: existing
  • Project license: AGPL

Outcomes

Since the fundraiser ended, as of January 2014,  5 major versions of the software have been released. Code is hosted at Gitorious. Releases have added support for 3D models, documents, specifying media file licenses, media file gelocation, and improved plugin architecture. Development of an Android app has also begun. The project hosted several interns as part of Google Summer of Code / GNOME Outreach Program for Women in the middle of 2013.

Commentary