At the NLUUG (dutch Unix/Linux user group) conference, Ede, Holland on the 15th of May 2008 CAcert will have a special booth for CAcert assurances (information, individual and organisation assurances). See conference details .

The Perl Authors Upload Server (PAUSE) has had a self signed cert for it’s SSL stuff. As of April 19, 2008 it will use a cert signed by CAcert.

For more information: http://www.cpan.org/modules/04pause.html#ssl

CAcert group is now approved on LinkedIn, and open to the CAcert community. The group is reachable at http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/89248/182D4E19701F

At the Penguin Convention in Michigan there will be a keysigning party for Michigan and the
surrounding cities (Flint, Lansing etc.). Penguicon is open to the public, but registration is now at the door only for this year.  Penguicon will take place next weekend, April 18-20. in Michigan, US and the details can be found on the official website.  The keysigning portion will take place on Saturday.
More information on the Penguicon Website (http://www.penguicon.org/).

Certification & Keysigning will be held on 25th of April (Friday evening at 19h local time) in Restaurant & Cafe Rila (changed location) on Balanstrasse 16 in the Muenchen city center. You can submit your attendance and your keys latest by 20th of April (Sunday), the listing will be made on Monday. The official site about the meeting is held on CAcert wiki.

CAcert is now official under the GPL Licence Version 2. More information and the Source Code could be found under http://www.cacert.org/src-lic.php

CAcert Inc. as association, will have a Special General Meeting on two by-laws issues to be voted upon:

1. Rules defining non-profit (a prerequisite for tax reasons);
2. Enable to vote via email by CAcert association members (needed to get an easier influence from membership).

The SGM is on 4th of April 2008 11 pm MET, via CAcert irc channel. The details are in the SGM agenda.

CAcert association members are called to attend this meeting. The minimum quorum for a formal meeting is five attendees. Even if these voting topics are not much of a discussion the SGM is important and minimizes the costs of operation.

die Assurer Challenge, die demnächst für alle CAcert Assurer Pflicht sein wird, kann jetzt auch mit deutschen Fragen abgelegt werden. Und auch die Anleitung gibt’s inzwischen auf deutsch: http://wiki.cacert.org/wiki/AssurerPr%C3%BCfung

At the ApacheCon April 7-11, 2008 in Amsterdam, the official Apache User conference of the Apache Software Foundation there will be a CAcert booth for Individual and Organisation Assurances from 9-11 April. Visit the booth!

Be prepared and if you are not a CAcert Coimmunity Member yet, read the Community Agreement, join and registrate and print at least three Community Application (CAP) forms with your name and email address for the Assurance event.
The Oophaga Foundation, which organisation is taking care of CAcert events in Holland is looking for CAcert assurers who can help to assure on these conference dates. Please react to  cacert-support if you want to help.

As promised, there is now a current report posted on the wiki from Audit. Highlights:

• CAcert is in the process of rolling out its new CAcert Community Agreement. The website now refers to it.
• Soon, expect to see checkboxes to tick with statements like “I agree to the CAcert Community Agreement”.
• The Assurance Policy is the next policy that the Audit needs tied down. Currently, it is at an advanced stage. Debate is going on as to whether to drop the requirement for Dates of Birth, as these are considered useful for fraud in some places. Unfortunately, the system does use this as an internal discriminator, so there are pros and cons.
• Pat Wilson is now working on the Security Manual. Thanks, and welcome Pat!
• The critical systems are the critical path for audit! Evaldo has been tasked to build the sysadm team, move the systems and implement dual control. See other blog entries!
• Have you met the Assurer Challenge yet? CATS is in place, and some time soon, assurances will be blocked for those who have not as yet met the challenge.
• If you are interested in the Audit work, there is a ToDo list on the wiki, and I have put the audit criteria online with the working commentary and (wip) conformance. See the main report for that location and the secret password!

That’s it from the Audit side. Now over to you!