CACert?

[Bill McGonigle]

On Oct 10, 2005, at 16:34, Christopher Schmidt wrote:

> but still doesn't answer the one
> question I really have: can I use these certificates and not have my
> clients in IE get an error message?

No.  Well, sort of.  If the user has the CACert root certificate 
installed he won't see a warning.  He can get that from you, from a 
link on your website, whatever.  But it's not shipped by IE or Firefox 
by default.  IE requires $70,000 to get included (IIRC) and M
Mozilla is confused about what to do.  They're working on it but with 
only 2000 notaries world-wide it's arguably hard to justify.  I believe 
Opera and Konqueror are including it. (aside: your browser only trusts 
[Verisign/Thawte/GTE,etc.] because the browser ships with their cert.)  
On the upside, a user need only once install a CACert root certificate 
- this is one advantage over self-signed certificates.

> However, it seems like an interesting project, and one I would like to
> assist in. Does anyone know who to contact to get involved in their
> website creation? It's very possible that it's run by people who aren't
> English fluent, or people who simply don't have time to invest in it,
> and I'm willing to put my time and money where my mouth is, given the
> right contact point.

Try duane at cacert.org.  Maybe twice.  Your characterization of the 
management is not incorrect, but their heart is in the right place.  
Ditto for the website.  Also try their Wiki for more useful reading.

They certainly do need help but if one is displeased with the current 
$300/yr-for-nothing regime that is SSL certificates, this seems like 
the only way out.

-Bill
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