In 2000, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology funded the port of the project to Microsoft Windows and the associated documentation. He released version 1.0.0 on September 7 th, 1999. The GPG (GnuPG) project was originally created by Werner Kock.
Developers are also free to delete this clause in the event they don’t want to have the terms of the license changed post-production.
In order to ensure the license implementation remains “Up-To-Date,” the GPL includes a “any later version” clause that allows users of the software to choose between the original or new terms as they are revised by the FSF. GPL was the first copyleft license published for general use and the third version of the GPL was released on June 29 th, 2007. This fact makes GPL-based work distinct from other open source licenses such as BSD. Since the GPL is a “ copyleft” licsense, it ensures that derivative works can only be distributed under the same terms. The terms also include derivative works created from the originally published work. Additionally, copyleft is included in the GPL to help ensure that these freedoms remain in-tact when the work is distributed. When a computer program, application, or other software project is published under the GPL, the Free Software Definition rights are transferred to the user of the project. The original GNU GPL was written by Richard Stallman from the FSF ( Free Software Foundation) for the GNU project. Any software application or project produced under this license ensures the software remains free. The license ensures that the end-user (defined as an individual, company, or organization) has the freedom to both use, share, copy, or study the software produced under the license.
The GNU GPL ( GNU General Public License) is the most used free software license in the market.
How Does the GNU General Public License Work? One is allowed to use, modify, and distribute GPG in accordance with the GNU General Public License.
At the time of this writing, there are two production versions of GnuPG (GPG) in release:ġ.4.13 which is the standalone, portable version of the distribution and most used, andĢ.0.19 which is the most enhanced version of the project, but can be more challenging to build.Īll versions of GnuPG are open source, or free. The second version of GPG (GnuPG) also includes support for S/MIME. There are a number of applications and libraries included with the GPG distribution. The project includes a versatile key management system in addition to access modules for a number of public key directories. GnuPG (or GPG) allows consumers and developers to both encrypt and sign data and standard communications. GnuPG is the open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by the IETF’s RFC 4880. As a result, OpenPGP has become the leading standard for public key cryptography in the past decade. By participating in the OpenPGP Alliance, members are able to join a team of developers and businessmen and women who are able to work together on both the current standard and future modifications or improvements as technology improves. This work applies the PKI methodology and thought processes that have emerged from the OpenPGP community to applications other than email. The OpenPGP Allience is an organization that allows companies to collaborate with a common goal – to produce and promote a consistent international standard for email encryption. By publishing the results of the working group as an IETF proposed standard under RFC 4880, OpenPGP is now able to be implemented by any company or organization without having to pay any licensing fees. Previous to the formation of the working group, the standard had existed as a proprietary product since 1991. In 1997, the OpenPGP Working Group was formed under the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to create an open source standard. The protocol is based on the PGP work created by Phil Zimmermann and defines the standard formats for exchanging public keys, encrypting messages, certificates, and signatures. OpenPGP is the non-proprietary protocol created to allow encrypting email using public key cryptography technology. It is primarily intended to increase the security of email communications similar to PGP however, is a completely free implementation of the OpenPGP standard. GPG can be used to sign, encrypt, and decrypt text, for email, files, directories, and entire disk partitions. The project is a data encryption and decryption application which provides end-users with a cryptographic privacy and authentication system for communicating electronic data. GPG, or GNU Privacy Guard, is a free replacement and competing product for PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).