CAcert ist dieses Jahr Gast auf der Cebit 2010 bei Linux New Media im Rahmen der CeBIT Open Source Project Lounge 2010 in Halle 2, Stand F34.
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Category Archives: News
CAcert AGM, New Board and Annual Report
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On 2010-01-30 CAcert held its Annual General Meeting. Minutes will be published soon on the wiki.
A new board was elected and positions were assigned during 2010-02-02 board meeting. We are happy to announce the new CAcert board formed by
- Lambert Hofstra (President)
- Daniel Black (Vice President)
- Ernestine Schwob (Treasurer)
- Mark Lipscombe (Secretary and continuing as Public Officer)
- Nick Bebout (Member)
- Mario Lipinski (Member)
- Ian Grigg (Member)
During the AGM CAcert’s annual report (PDF) was presented and accepted by the membership. It shows many things happened at CAcert during the last year and is worth reading to get an impression of CAcert’s progress during the last time.
A big thank you to all people volunteering and helping to achieve this successful result. CAcert is dependent on many volunteers and is looking forward for your help to achieve such a good result for the coming year.
CAcert at FOSDEM 2010
CAcert will be present at Fosdem 2010, the Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting, February Sat 6th and Sun 7th 2010
- Booth (Sat + Sun)
- Lightning Talk: CAcert: Client-certificates and SSO – the old-new thing, Speaker: Ian Grigg (Sun 11:40-11:55, Room: Ferrer)
- Assurance Party (Sun 12:00-14:00, Room: Ferrer)
- Keysigning Party (Sun 12:00-14:00, Room: Ferrer)
As our CrossCommunity guest on our booth we are welcome A. Stormont with the projects Nexanta and StormOS
CU at Fosdem ….
PoJAM – PolicyOnJuniorAssurersMembers moves to DRAFT
After a recent policy group decision p20100119 Iang updated all the working wiki pages to show our new Policy on Junior Assurers / Members (or PoJAM for short) going to DRAFT.
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CAcert at OpenSourceDays-2010 Copenhagen, DK – March 5th + 6th
CAcert will be present at OpenSourceDays-2010 Copenhagen, DK, March 5th and 6th with a booth and a Keysigningparty.
Open Source Days is the largest open source conference in the Nordic area. It’s your opportunity to meet, share, and learn from professional open source experts.
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December 2009 Community Update
- 20091221 Nick Bebout: Resignation as Dispute Resolution Officer (DRO)
- [Poll for AGM day] (Fr,Sa,Su?) Inc Members, please vote! (finished)
- 20091220 Board Meeting
- “process of software review” ends with the motion: m20091220.2, propose 4 people, and to request ABCs
- Support is proceeding to bring in Triage people. 3 ABCs have been completed. Michael Taenzer, Martin Schultze, Wolfgang Kasulke are now complete, so t/l-support will probably propose them for Support Engineer.
- Arbitration: “That, given m20090811.1, and today’s informal information that some arbitrators are non-working, board requests an immediate update of the state and health of the Arbitration system from DRO, with a view to changing the roles and re-invigorating the process.”. Motion m20091220.3 carried
- Update on Finance: No Annual General Meeting schedule yet (Update: Boardmeeting Jan 3th: AGM is at Jan 30th)
- Minutes 20091216 Essen Software MiniTOP
- Software, repository: Repository is up and going. Haven’t got the test system, just the developer system. We expect to have everything together by end of January.
- Birdshack doco
- Root ceremony: In order to re-do this process, we have to do: planning, collection of the people, budget, hardware, and also to come up with a new concept for protection of the root. This latter is important, and the whole thing will need to be serious and documented for presentation to a new auditor.
- Hamburg Assurance mini-TOP 20091215 results with three new Special Assurance programs proposals
- Policy On Junior Assurers / Members (2) (Discussion started 2009-12-20 in Policy Group)
- TTP-assisted Assurance Policy (Discussion not yet started)
- Policy for Nucleus (former Super-Assurance) (Discussion not yet started)
- 20091215 Confirmation received for a booth at the CEBIT 2010. CAcert get this sponsored booth from the Linux New Media (Cebit Open Source) (CEBIT Event Organisation)
- 20091211 Support Team declares reaching a milestone in clearing out the support Inbox. All that’s left is the future!
- 20091205 Confirmation received for a booth at the FOSDEM 2010 6-7 Feb 2010, Brussels Belgium. (FOSDEM Event Organisation)
CAcert at FOSDEM and CEBIT 2010 – Booths confirmed
At Saturday Dec 5th 2009 we received the confirmation for a booth at the FOSDEM 2010 6-7 Feb 2010, Brussels Belgium. (FOSDEM Event Organisation)
and at Tuesday 15th, 2009 we also received the confirmation for a booth at the CEBIT 2010. CAcert get this sponsored booth from the Linux New Media (Cebit Open Source) (CEBIT Event Organisation)
Support Activity and Error Rates
In the last few weeks, our one Support Engineer (Werner, working mostly alone) has processed 65 support requests, 40 in the last week. Each case generates 5 mails. At the moment, the SE works with an absence of system, on a clunky silly mailing list, so there is no workflow assistance available to him. He has to remember each of those cases over the days-cycle time, and relate them to all the other emails.
Errors are inevitable. I’ve so far seen and counted 3 errors or blunders. Which means we’re talking around a 5% error rate. That’s to be expected when building a new system, working with fresh people, with minimal historical help, and working through a flood of a backlog with crappy technical support and poor information. Also known as, drowning.
(Obviously, in time, we want to reduce that to around 1-2%. When I did my 5-10 cases a month back, I generated at least one error. I’m not good enough for Support, I’m up in the 10-20% range.)
You can help us by pointing out the errors, directly, and suggesting what it is you would rather have seen. Positive suggestions are always appreciated.
The Triage team — Wolfgang, Martin, Michael, Joost — have to this point worked through outstanding emails back to July this year. See the attached for a picture of today’s Inbox. *Yes, it’s more or less empty!* They got there last night, and have reached the target I set them, to get back to July.
That means a human has processed every one of approximately one thousand support emails received over the last 5 months. There’s probably dozens of errors in their processing, but that misses the point.
In the next month or so, some or all of the Triage people above will get through their ABCs and become SEs or Support Engineers. At that point Werner will have help. At that point, we’ll be able to improve our systems. And, we’ll need more Triage people!
You can help us by signing up to Triage. Let me know if you fit the profile: Assurer, great with mail / MUA, etc, time to handle lots of little, quick tasks, good with English reading (other languages an advantage), and you grok the community (CCA, DRP and you want to know more about Security Policy but were always afraid to ask…). IRC.
We need people outside the European evening slot…
iang,
interim, temporary, impatient Support t/l,
looking for any excuse to get sacked!
ATE-Göteborg, Wed Dec 16th 2009
CAcert Assurer Training Event Göteborg
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Much has happened during the past year. A list of up till now mostly “orally transmitted” rules have been cast in policies. New procedures (e.g. the Assurer Challenge) and obligations (e.g. in the CAcert Community Agreement) have been decided. The Assurer Training Events try to bring all this informations to “the people”:
– To what, does the CCA protect every CAcert-Community-Member and as such also you?
– Can you recount the 5 statements of the “Purpose of Assurance”?
– Can you at least recount 10 security marks of the Swedish passport?
Answers to these and following questions are given at the Assurer Training Events (ATE’s).
Participation in the events is free, Contributions are however appreciated.
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2009 November Community Update
- (Non-Critical) Infrastructure Projects are advancing, Board has accepted to go for Vienna (Sonance) and Berne one is in preparation (contract needs to be made), the hardware in Berne is ready. (see Audit Next Steps (Systems), Infrastructure Host)
- New Arbitrators makes their first steps in the Arbitration Team. The backlog of Arbitration cases increases rapidly, after the support blockage seems to be fixed.
- The first new Support Engineer starts working in the Support Team, also new people on the Triage team. As working on the backlog of the support mailbox, about 15 new disputes upto now forwarded to the Arbitrations Team to a total of 53 init (23)/running (30) cases. Some diputes filed originaly Jun 2009, Sep 2009
- The Draft CPS is now on the main site see on the Blog and the CPS on main Site.
- Assurances Program: As of Board motion m20090912.1 and finaly m20090914.2 also the assurances of underaged people (u18) were ceased. A workaround is to follow the PoJAM (WIP) procedure, but a dispute filing is allways possible.
- Policy group decide p20091108 to make IDNs available everyone with some restrictions to minimize homograph risks.
- recruitment of Support Engineers
. relates to the Arbitration – Case Managers – Support discussion
. Support was identified as a bottleneck, now starting try #3 to get people in
. see also Board Meeting Agenda 2009-11-15
. and Board-Next-Meeting Sunday 2009-11-15 – 21:00 UTC – Input
. and Board-Next-Meeting Sunday 2009-11-15 – 21:00 UTC – Input – Reply
. and Board-Next-Meeting Sunday 2009-11-15 – 21:00 UTC – Input – another Reply
. IanG appointed as temporary Support Officer assisted by u60 see e.g. Support Team