E-Mail Encryption: Why Isn't Everyone Doing It?

Ryan Malayter rmalayter@bai.org
Wed Oct 23 20:34:01 2002


From: Graham [mailto:graham.todd@ntlworld.com]=20

>Surely its not beyond the expertise of those=20
>who produce such a brilliant program an GnuPG=20
>to provide a GUI interface through which ALL=20
>commands can be given and which (in Linux=20
>anyway) can be used as a stand alone program=20
>to encrypt or sign emails even in MUAs without=20
>GPG integration?

There are more ways to help with open source projects than simple
programming. In fact, if you were to organize a GUI design document for
an easy-to-use front end, I'll bet you could find someone to do the
coding.

One of the major problems with open-source software, in my opinion, is
that it is written by software engineers for software engineers. It
seems very few open-source projects have an interface design team with
graphic artists, usability experts, "user-level" beta testers, etc. Most
commercial development teams have such people to make sure the end
result is not only usable (in the functional sense) but easy enough to
be *useful* to the vast nontechnical masses.

Ryan Malayter
Sr. Network & Database Administrator
Bank Administration Institute
Chicago, Illinois, USA
PGP Key: http://www.malayter.com/pgp-public.txt
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Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves
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     -Sir Winston S. Churchill