There are a number of problems with Truecrypt (with a little history that
isn't terribly well known/documented).
1. It is based off code that comes from two different applications which
merged at one point. One of them is ScramDisk and one of them is encryption
for the Masses (E4M). I know ScramDisk was under a liberal license because
the author wanted to ensure people could review the code. A combination of
the merged code eventually became DriveCrypt. I believe this was after a
company called SecurStar bought the code. I believe the copyright was bought.
However because the license some of the code was released on TrueCrypt
eventually came about. It was about a year before TrueCrypt was released and
I suspect the authors may have been the original ScramDisk or E4M authors.
This is complete speculation on my part. However the time frame makes sense.
The authors probably signed an agreement that prohibited them from working on
the liberal licensed code and they were forced to discontinue the names. I'm
not sure SecurStar actually got the domains as I believe the site remained up
and directed users to the SecurStar site.
2. Because of the agreement signed and the time involved the authors were
probably forced to hide. It is unclear who authors TrueCrypt. The code is
publicly distributed although not developed openly. This has led to a lot of
trust issues as it isn't (and I don't think ever was) easily auditable.
3. As others have stated it is not free software as defined by the FSF. Tails
is a project connected to the Tor project which furthers anonymity. This
project and Tails are free software friendly projects. I'm not 100% certain
Tails is FSF complaint. However it is a small project and they do seek to be
free software friendly. They discontinued distribution of TrueCrypt because
of the licensing issues.
