News: PGP deep-freezed - NAI shrugs

[jared_c]

I've never seen any company take such a good product and totally turn it into crap as much as Network Associates has done to PGP. Ever since they took over the project and Phil Zimmerman left, we have watched PGP go down the drain. This article caught my eye, and all you PGP users may find it interesting. God damn network associates.
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Network Associates has put its PGP Desktop software into the deep freeze, leaving both users and its own staff in the dark.

"Effective immediately Network Associates will cease new development on these products, and not sell additional licenses, services and support agreements," the company wrote in an email last week.

Network Associates, which had bought PGP Inc for $35 million in December 1997, put the division up for sale last year, but decided to keep certain parts of the technology in house, making the bundle less attractive to potential purchasers. In fact, NAI dismantled the bundle, removing the IPSEC utility and firewall and the SDK, before putting the entrails in the shop window, according to critics.

Not surprisingly, the bowdlerized bundle found no takers, and NA has told its customers - but not its shareholders - that there'll be no more investment in the product beyond maintaining existing support contracts.

Hot on the trail, Stephen Simogyi collared Network Associates President Gene Hodges last week, who again pitched for buyers.

Yesterday NAI staff confirmed that they hadn't been given a steer. Stephen pinpoints his experiences of Network Associates anti-marketing strategy for its crown jewels:

"I can honestly say that I never once saw it marketed… NAI not only didn't spend much effort getting the word out, it seemed to be, well, actively inert when it came to promoting PGP. If the company had wanted to make money from PGP Desktop, I'm convinced it could have," he writes.

Corporate security issues - against which the PGP suite is a cheap and comprehensive prophylactic - have never been higher. And yet we find a company with such an obviously attractive product - it's pretty unique with its ease of use - too tired to sell it, but too tired to let it die.

John Ashcroft has been drumming the beat recently, reminding the tech industry that a "lucrative surveillance state" (in our Tom's words) can be built from the ashes of the September 11 attacks. This obviously doesn't extend to personal privacy software. Are we the only people who find the neglect of PGP somewhat fishy?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/24307.html

[souleman]

Thank god for Opengp and gnugp and the other open source downloable versions of the program.

[lkennedy.guru]

I Agree!!!!! I use pgp at my work so no one can sniff though my e-mails or attachments. I also run a server at home. Thanks to open source projects I am able ,for little to nothing, know that my data is not going to the wrong people. That helps me sleep at night. I would advise anyone to use pgp. Phil Zimmerman IS A GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One closing point. Do to fedral law the encryption technology can not be distributed without the consent of the NSA and other goverment groups. Below is a link to a free copy of pgp international that can be distributed outside the U.S.A. I am fairly knoledgable about the product so replay if you need any help.

http://www.pgpi.org/

[jcmcb]

Man that sucks, I love PGP for Mac....

[VanEck]

this news is hard to swallow. everyone loves pgp. everyone except for the government and nsa. not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but perhaps they had something to do with this.

[{P²P}Apocalypse]

I run PGP 7.0.4 and use it between myself and my clients. We live by
it. I hope the pgp key servers stay up and running. Has anyone heard
if the keyserver at pgp.com is going to continue? Anyway, I hope this
is not some ploy to sneek in some new program with weak security and
back doors for the sake of "anti terrorism" laws and such. This is a sad time in the relm of privacy.

[zigar]

FYI...

PGP will go on, says its inventor
By BRIAN SULLIVAN
(March 07, 2002) Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) will go on, despite a move by Network Associates Inc. (NAI) to shelve the encryption product after it couldn't find a buyer, PGP inventor Phil Zimmermann said today.
Although Zimmermann sold PGP to Santa Clara, Calif.-based NAI in 1997, the protocols for the encryption code are open to all on the Internet.

"PGP is an institution," Zimmermann said in a telephone interview from his home in the Silicon Valley. "It is larger than any single code base from any single company. There are a lot of very concerned people from the PGP user community who want to try to find a solution to fill this niche."

http://www.computerworld.com/itresou..._KEY73,00.html

[The Old Man]

Well, I'm the rookie around here on this subject, but... The McAfee version still in the box does have the VPN feature configurable (except for W2000, which has it's own tunnel) and all the rest of the GUI features. Maybe I just got one of the last/first boxes of this version. I've used P.Z.'s last (I guess it was still his work?) version 7.0.3 and still do. (haven't yet loaded the McAfee commercial version, still reading the manual). I'm not sure that there is much more in the commercial package than you can configure with the open source 7.0.3, but then again it's still in the box on my shelf. Just kind of antsy about loading it over my *working* PGP version! But then, someday, I'll have to flatten a drive and so that's when I'll try out the commercial version. But you're correct up there; I can't figure out why they don't run with the program and get back some of their 35-mil, because there are a thousand businesses out there that would pay decent money to secure their nets. But that's enough from me, I'm happy with what I got, and what PGP 7.0.3 can do, and I'll use W2000 for VPN until I get around to trying out the commercial version...