CAcert at SANE2004

support for CAcert

[By Teus Hagen]
The SANE 2004 conference created an excellent opportunity to present the CAcert Free Digital Certificates initiative. The Free Software Bazaar and the SANE Poster session were the meeting points for getting many CAcert Assurances done. The success at the Usenix Technical conference in Boston in July was repeated at this conferences.

Some statistics: before the SANE conference only 8 Assurers were listed for the Netherlands. Already during the conference the listed number increased rapidly up to 39 on the day the conference was closed. Many Assurers had more as 25 Assurances done. The estimation is that more than 100 CAcert holders reached the Assurer status (over 100 points of trust).

For other countries (like Greece, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium) CAcert trust holders went home as Assurer in order to increase the Web of Trust in their country. Some Open Source communities picked the initiative up for code signing purposes. Europe is taking the lead in creating the CAcert web of trust.

In October 2004, the new CAcert web page software is supposed to be activated. For many languages web page translations are required. Persons who signed up for looking into the translation or improvements to the text signed up for Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Danish.

The CAcert Assurance initiative at SANE was sponsored by NLnet. Thanks to the organizers of SANE for creating the opportunity and help. Thanks to the Dutch CAcert Assurers who made this possible and give their free time for it.

Lessons learned to improve the Assurance procedure and to improve the Assurance Form have been sent back to CAcert.org.