GPGMail cost
hi there basically this small fee you speak of if it is reasonable i would pay now to help the developmet along. you should do preorders. however i suggest you consider making the price Very low as you may loose a customer base that has long relied on the free services you supply.
i would say no more than $15
if you put a preorder button on your website i would pay and i think many more will also preorder and that would help speed the project up
just my two cents
james
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1 Posted by Daniel Polanco on 17 Oct, 2014 07:03 PM
I think a preorder is an excellent idea. I would pay as well as long as the price wasn't over um... about $15.
2 Posted by remo on 17 Oct, 2014 09:25 PM
Ok I understand. 9.99 sounds a good to me!
3 Posted by DaMan on 18 Oct, 2014 02:41 AM
$15 is perfect for me. And yes, let's do pre-order. At least this will help with beer.
4 Posted by Sussex by the S... on 18 Oct, 2014 08:05 AM
I'm happy to pay as it's a very useful tool. But I use it on all the computers owned by each member of the family in the house: which is four people.
Will there be a payment option for families? Or would we need to get four versions, or just one?
5 Posted by Paulino Michela... on 18 Oct, 2014 04:59 PM
Where is the button? :)
6 Posted by Dan on 18 Oct, 2014 05:27 PM
$10 is reasonable, up to $15 would be fine. As a developer I understand the difficulty you guys have and fully support your charge model.
7 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 18 Oct, 2014 07:28 PM
Hello there!
Aside from the costs, it is a matter of payment. Many people which don't have a credit card or PayPal account may have good reasons to use GPGMail. I am not only thinking of people of interest, but young people as well.
My suggestion would be to put it into the AppStore. Yes, you may loose some of the money, but deployment would be extremely easy, the outreach would probably increase and the various methods of payment would make it easy for anyone to get the absolutely best OpenPGP toolkit for OS X. ;)
Kind regards,
Markus - who cant read encrypted mails at the moment... ;)
8 Posted by Daniel Polanco on 18 Oct, 2014 08:16 PM
I can get in board with that! +1 from me. It would be nice to have the
whole suite up there. Once again, willing to donate what I can (maybe
even programming time if I have any extra ;-) ) to get it done.
Sent from my mobile.
9 Posted by Raphael on 18 Oct, 2014 08:49 PM
I will be more than happy to pay a fee. I think this is perfectly normal and comprehensible. Moreover, it will guarantee good quality and security level and durability !
Thanks and keep up the good work !
10 Posted by tyko on 18 Oct, 2014 09:42 PM
I'm happy to pay a fee but the fewer impediments to adoption the better.
11 Posted by Thomas Mack on 19 Oct, 2014 09:15 AM
Hi folks,
I like your Software and I also will pay for your excellent work. (As a former donator you know this already :) ) Preordering would be a great Option, if it helps you to get your business running. Security related Software has to be up to date and needs permanent improvement. I agree that you have to charge for Updates in future and will encourage you to keep a moderate price level and I will keep up paying for the software.
As I'm responsible for a small Team, I would also like to have an Option to get a Group License of GPG-Tools too.
Keep up the good work!!!
Regards
Thomas Mack
12 Posted by Twan on 19 Oct, 2014 01:27 PM
I find it difficult to put a price on my privacy, there is no immediate and obvious economical indication how to set a price on privacy. Seen from a principled perspective its price should be pretty high. On the other hand such a price should not preclude people with lesser means.
Why not a subscription model?
13 Posted by Cubemammal on 19 Oct, 2014 01:33 PM
14 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 19 Oct, 2014 01:40 PM
I don't really see a subscription model to help to "spread the word" from a principle point of view.
On the other hand, I am more than willing to pay a quite high fee, even well over $50.
GPGTools is much more important to me than Parallels or even my Office Suite.
I see more of a Basic / Premium version, the latter with (priority) support and such.
That would allow to "spread the word" with the basic but would be an easy way to get some money into the project for supporters by buying the premium version.
Support Staff 15 Posted by Luke Le on 19 Oct, 2014 03:23 PM
Hi everyone,
thank you for all your great suggestions!
The major issue with not having a pre-order form already up, is that we're still looking into the right service provider which will handle things like license creation, different methods for payment, VAT deduction for companies, volume/family pricing and other stuff. Since we're from Europe and not USA, this is much more difficult and the options limited.
We were thinking, that as a quick workaround we could adapt our current donation site to support pre-orders, so we have the time necessary to get the beta out, and later once we've found a good service provider, we'll switch to that system.
Would that be an acceptable option?
As for the price, we're still thinking about this a lot. We're absolutely on board with Twan. We don't want it to be too high for people with lesser means, since their security and privacy needs should be catered to (in some edge cases even more so) as much as those who could effort to pay more.
Markus, we would absolutely love being accepted in the App Store, since it would cause a lot less headaches as we basically could leverage possibly one of the biggest payment providers out there, but unfortunately that's not an option, since GPGMail is a plugin only using private API (since there is no API for Mail.app).
I'd like to add how it incredible it feels to receive so many positives responses. We were really scared putting that letter up and were only waiting for flame wars to start.
You can't imagine how much this means to us!
Thank you!
16 Posted by Lee on 19 Oct, 2014 03:43 PM
Do you have any thoughts yet on how/if you'll tie in with recent past or new donators? Now that you're planning on making GPGMail paid, it seems like it'd be useful to at least automatically award a license to anyone who donates more per year then whatever you plan to charge, at least if you intend to continue to take donations as well. That might also let you keep a lower upfront price (<$10) for general personal versions: you could continue encouraging donations, with a license included for $10+ but also there still being name recognition for $20+ and so on. If donators must both donate and then pay again separately though it seems a more cumbersome then it could be.
17 Posted by Daniel Polanco on 19 Oct, 2014 03:45 PM
Yes for pre-order option through donation! Let’s get some money to get the project started :D Or even a bounty source. But KISS is fine. As long as you accept bitcoins. They are burning a hole in my pocket ;-)
As for the App Store, that is quite unfortunate. I’m not knowledgeable about Mac Mail, so I don’t know if there is some way around this, or if we’ll just have to push Apple to create an API. In any case, I still look forward to the day we can put it on the App Store.
The other thing I was thinking about was iOS. I doubt there is much that can be done there, but that is another place that a paid team **might** be able to work on.
Daniel
18 Posted by Lee on 19 Oct, 2014 03:58 PM
The App Store has many problems, with the major technical limitations it imposes being just part of it. If Apple ever stabilizes and makes public APIs available for Mail plugins and allows them into the MAS, I hope you'd continue to offer a non-MAS version as well, though I suppose in that case compiling our own or getting it elsewhere and then donating would remain an option.
19 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 19 Oct, 2014 04:02 PM
I see. Too bad. It may be a bit daring, but have you contacted Apple yet explaining the situation?
Given the importance of privacy and the awesome work you have done so far, there might be a solution.
So as for my suggested prepaid option to keep users under age or with high high privacy needs in the game:
I would suggest finding someone who accepts [PaySafe Cards][psc]. I don't know if they are a big deal elsewhere, but they have a pretty
good infrastructure in Europe (you can get them at basically every gas station and a lot of supermarkets in Germany, for example).
Kind regards,
Markus
[psc]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paysafecard
20 Posted by leveebreaks on 19 Oct, 2014 04:05 PM
I would definitely pay for GPGMail, regardless of payment solution. But one can dream of Apple Pay working with websites payment Paypal-style!
BTW, how does the new extensions in OS X relates to GPGMail? Apple created the example extension Markup for Mail, but is it possible for a developer to do GPG operations on messages in Mail using an official extension?
21 Posted by Brian Puccio on 19 Oct, 2014 11:49 PM
I'll gladly pay for GPGmail and for future versions with each (seemingly annual) OS X update, as long as the continued fees aren't too steep (maybe under $20 per update).
22 Posted by Ludger Heide on 20 Oct, 2014 08:35 AM
This has been the only "this software is no longer freeware" announcement where my first thought has been "good, I'll happily pay for it".
However, I am very worried about the strong tie between a person and a GPG key that can be established if you do not take steps to separate a payer from the keys he generates. In some cases the security the people need/expect when they use GPG could be compromised.
TL,DR: PLEASE make sure there is no way a payment/license can be connected to a GPG key!
23 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 20 Oct, 2014 08:43 AM
Good point! +1 is not enough for that.
—
Markus Mahlberg
+49 151 52372733
24 Posted by james on 22 Oct, 2014 11:45 PM
also to iterate the comment by @Daniel Polanco
bitcoin could be a very viable solution no name required just an id number and a bitcoin address all secure and anonymous and increasingly developing in the poorest of areas in the world. this way there is no name tied to a license only an email which can be easily created for the sole purpose of the license and would not give away the users identity therefore making it impossible for gpg tools to know who the license belongs to by name but only by an assigned iD and the registration certificate or serial generated from that iD by Hex-Rays no bank transfer no paper trail and we are back to our normal safe mail environment.
25 Posted by Naganu Nanu on 23 Oct, 2014 02:29 PM
Let us not to be confused: a pre-order and a donation are two different things. One can pre-order and donate, but a donation cannot --and should not-- be considered entitlement to something as it will cease to be a donation.
On the anonymity, I really do not get it. You are purchasing a program that allows you to create an infinite number of key pairs, associated with an infinite number of emails. Those worried about anonymity clearly do not know how GPG/PGP works.
26 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 23 Oct, 2014 02:33 PM
Well, that's a bit of a harsh judgement. Maybe some people don't want any records that they purchased a license of GPGTools.
Some might even have good reasons for that. Just because _you_ don't get it makes it wrong or unnecessary for others.
27 Posted by Naganu Nanu on 23 Oct, 2014 02:41 PM
Markus Mahlberg,
I am very curious to know what would the reasons behind not wanting purchase records be. I am also wondering how a company would handle that, considering they will have to pay taxes, etc.
I can buy a gun, I just don't need to fire it.
28 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 23 Oct, 2014 02:56 PM
Pretty easy: Because they simply don't want to is one reason, and a valid one.
The other might be that they are afraid that their government might see them as a person of interest simply because they own encryption tools.
You know, for some people encryption isn't there just because. In some jurisdiction a financial transaction to "GPGTools Powerful EMail and Whatnot Encryption, Ltd." may roughly translate to:
Dear Domestic Intelligence Service!
I would like to notify you that I have things to hide from you.
Maybe I don't like our government, so I would like to send emails like minded people or inform the international community.
Sadly, I am no tech wiz, so I couldn't compile the Email encryption software myself. So I had to license it.
Now that I pointed you to the fact that I do encrypt my mail by pointing you to the fact that I bought a mail encryption tool, I can turn in myself as well.
Please tell me a time and place where it is most convenient for you. I kindly ask you not to torture me too much, as this is known to be bad both for
mental and physical health.
Kind regards from a poor lad suffering from the consequences of ignorance,
D. Issident
I don't know where you live, Naganu Nanu, but that's reality for some people.
29 Posted by Naganu Nanu on 23 Oct, 2014 03:09 PM
FileVault is part of OS X, so is openssl. Each one of us (using OS X) has already fallen under the "I have things to hide from you." label.
Either way, GPG Suite will remain open source. Perhaps those so worried should opt not to buy it, but compile it on their own?
I currently live in the "Land of the free." :-)
30 Posted by Markus Mahlberg on 23 Oct, 2014 03:37 PM
One can buy a Mac in a store. With cash. That is hard to trace. Especially if a proxy does so.
Like I have written, not everybody is able to compile a software.
As far as I understand, the main purpose of creating GPGTools was to make it publicly available for people with lesser technical skills.
Everybody else could use alpine/mutt and gpg anyway.
So should the method of payment prevent people who need easy privacy the most (non-technical, living in a non-free jurisdiction) from obtaining software protecting said privacy?
That is more of an ethical than of a business question. Personally, I would think that any feasible precaution should be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk that somebody
suffers from consequences of buying encryption software protecting what is considered to be an universal human right (Article 19 UDHR).
Deem yourself lucky to live in the land of the free(d NSA)... Uuups, sorry ;)
BTW: If it wasn't for encryption software, we wouldn't even knew that...