Who Are We?

FreePG is a collaboration between various GnuPG downstream packagers and OpenPGP developers. These include representatives of Arch, Debian, Fedora, NixOS, Hockeypuck, and others. It is operated on a mutual-assistance basis, as specified in its governance document.

FreePG is not associated with g10code GmbH or the GnuPG project.

How Did We Get Here?

Most Linux distributions have for years manually maintained non-trivial patchsets against upstream GnuPG. FreePG is primarily a formalisation, standardisation and automation of this longstanding practice.

  • On 11 August 2015, Debian created a patch to address T1211. This patch (now catalogued as 0018) remains the oldest FreePG patch not yet merged upstream.
  • On 6th September 2022, draft-koch-openpgp-2015-rfc4880bis was (re)published, triggering the OpenPGP schism.
  • On 22nd August 2023, the librepgp.org domain was registered.
  • On 8th February 2024, it was announced that LibrePGP would not follow the IETF PQC specification.
  • On 26th June 2024, it was suggested on the tb-planning mailing list that forking GnuPG might be a backstop response to the schism.
  • On 9th July 2024, the “FreePGP” GitLab project was created as a joke.
    • Over the next few weeks, initial patches were sourced from the Arch, Debian and Fedora archives.
  • On 23rd July 2024, it stopped being funny because the downstreams were taking it seriously.
    • Over the next few months, Arch, Debian, Fedora and NixOS began aligning their existing patchsets with FreePG.
  • On 22nd August 2024, the project was renamed “FreePG”.
  • On 23rd February 2025, the freepg.org domain was registered.
  • In April 2025, the project was presented at the 9th annual OpenPGP Email Summit, when it was proposed to draw up a governance document.
  • On 26th August 2025, this website was created.
  • On 2nd November 2025, Gentoo began distributing FreePG (as a separate package).
  • On 1st January 2026, the governance model was agreed and published.
  • On 10th March 2026, the FreePG public mailing list was established.

Why Is There a Goose?

The goose with the keyring was inspired by a scene in the cult classic Untitled Goose Game. Geese are intelligent social animals, and make good guard dogs.