Google’s alpha-stage email encryption plugin lands on GitHub by David Meyer.
From the post:
Google has updated its experimental End-to-End email encryption plugin for Chrome and moved the project to GitHub. The firm said in a Tuesday blog post that it had “always believed strongly that End-To-End must be an open source project.” The alpha-stage, OpenPGP-based extension now includes the first contributions from Yahoo’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos. Google will also make its new crypto library available to several other projects that have expressed interest. However, product manager Stephan Somogyi said the plugin still wasn’t ready for the Chrome Web Store, and won’t be widely released until Google is happy with the usability of its key distribution and management mechanisms.
Not to mention that being open source makes it harder to lean on management to make compromises to suit governments. Imagine that, the strength to resist tyranny in openness.
If you are looking for a “social good” project for 2015, it is hard to imagine a better one in the IT area.