Facebook donates tens of thousands of euros to GnuPG project

From now on Facebook and another company donate tens of thousands of euros to the developers of GnuPG. In its own words, it wants to support ‘the important work’ behind the open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard.

Facebook announced on Friday that it, together with payment company Stripe, will donate $50,000 annually to the project. Facebook says it wants to improve the project with the annual donation.

GnuPG is an open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard, a widely used standard for encrypting emails, among other things. The German developer Werner Koch started seventeen years ago with the software, which is available for almost all major operating systems.

GnuPG is included by default in the privacy-conscious Linux distribution The Amnesic Incognito Live System, Tails for short. That software has been used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and is characterized by an emphasis on protecting privacy and anonymity. Last year, the software left beta after five years.

A major campaign was recently launched to raise money for the further development of the GnuPG project. Private individuals raised more than 177,000 euros, while 120,000 euros were requested. Thanks to the Facebook donation and gifts from The Linux Foundation, among others, the counter is even higher. Founder Koch says he is satisfied with this.