I did the same thing, but wrote considerably less on the topic, back in 2012.

Definitely fun little devices to play with.

http://robotrising.org/2012/10/capturing-weather-satellite-i...

Is this still possible? I remember reading somewhere that now it is encrypted or something like that, but can't find any sources right now?

Anyone is interested/capable/willing in porting SDR Sharp to Linux (and developing an open source version of this tool?)

SDR Sharp recently removed access to their source. I'm not sure of the source license of previous releases.

The source used to even work under Mono http://rtlsdr.org/softwarelinux

GQRX, Linrad, etc.