
Introduction 7
What Is GnuPG?
GnuPG is a freely available implementation of the OpenPGP
standard that was released to the public in 1999 by the German
developer Werner Koch. It is available for both Windows and
Unix-like computers (including Mac OS X).
Because GnuPG conforms to the OpenPGP standard,
it can be used to communicate with people using any other
OpenPGP-compliant software. “Freely available” means that
you can get for free. You also get access to all the source code
used to create the program, which is not directly useful to
many readers but is vital to those who can do something with
it. The formal name of the software is GnuPG, but ...