Oofroga, a cuddly free mascot

Oophaga logoAnother project with a successful ending.

Early January I asked Birgit to create a cuddly version of the Oophaga logo. After she (quite rightly so) asked about licenses and/or permissions and some talking with an Oophaga representative Birgit could get to work.
For those who don’t know Birgit, she designs and knits cuddly versions of several free mascots. She offers the designs under a CC license on StrickTux.de.
Oophaga is an organization in the Netherlands that supports CAcert activities.

OofrogaEarly Saturday morning in a cafeteria in Essen (DE) while waiting for the train towards FOSDEM Birgit posted her design for Oofroga. The design can be found & downloaded on http://stricktux.de/index.php?page=oofroga.

Once arrived at FOSDEM Oofroga was promptly promoted to guard-frog and stationed on a prominent location guarding over the merchandise. To our great joy this lead to NONE of the mugs or shirts being stolen. As well as draw a lot of extra attention to CAcert and providing a conversation subject.

After FOSDEM was over, Oofroga travelled with Mendel to the Netherlands for an extended tour on Dutch events & meetings.

ATE in Hamburg, 14th February 2012

There will be an ATE in Hamburg on 14th February 2012. More details on the wiki.

There are a couple of options to indicate that you are attending:

– Email I will attend ATE-Hamburg
– Edit the wiki directly

As IanG said: “The ATE or Assurer Training Event is exceptionally recommended for all Assurers, and include parts which contribute directly to our audit. Come and find out how you can also contribute.”

CAcert at FOSDEM in Brussels, BE

CAcert joins the open source event FOSDEM at ULB Brussels, Belgium on weekend February 4th/5th. Our stand is located in the K building on the ground floor. Our staff will happily answer your questions regarding CAcert and its certificates and perform assurances with you. Also for the CAcert fans of you we will bring our polo shirts for purchase.

If you come to the FOSDEM there are two important meetings you shouldn’t miss:

Saturday 16:00 room H.2214 talk “Trust – the root of evil?!”
One of our active members Benedikt Heintel is going to have a talk about trust: In a highly connected world like ours is trust one of the most important assets. But what if the root to trust is not trustworthy? This talk enlightens why most commercial CAs are not trustworthy by default, what we can learn from 2011’s cases like dutch DigiNotar and Malaysian DigiCert, what makes CAcert different, why CAcert is not in the browsers by default and what we do to make it happen.

Sunday 12:00 noon room Ferrer assurance party
Like previous years, participants can get assurances for their CAcert account to issue certificates valid for two years. For the assurance you will need at least one piece of official government-issued photo identification. Please register beforehand on the CAcert website and download the CAcert Certificate Assurance Programme (CAP) form. It is recommended to bring at least ten printed forms with you.

CAcert assurance session at linux.conf.au

There will be a CAcert assurance session as part of linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat, Victoria (Australia) on Tuesday 17 January.

If you would like to get assured or assure others, please come and see us!

– Francois and Jim

Cloaks on IRC (CAcert IRC network and Freenode IRC network)

I was wanting to see what everyone thought about cloaks on IRC. I am able to set them on the CAcert IRC network to whatever we would like, and as the Freenode CAcert group contact, I can request any cloaks that fit the pattern CAcert/* on Freenode.

Currently we have approximately 5 cloaks on CAcert IRC, and we have 26 CAcert cloaks on Freenode. Most of them are CAcert/Assurer/theirnick, but the problem I’m having is that it’s not really easy to verify if someone is an assurer or not, unless they are listed in the directory and note their IRC nick in there, or unless I can email support and if they would be allowed to tell me if someone is an assurer or not.

Any thoughts on what our policy should be for who can get a cloak, or what format they should be?

Nick

ATE Manchester / Crewe, UK – Sat 14th January

Much has happened during recent years. The old way of orally-transmitted procedures has now gone, and our rules have been cast into formal policies. New procedures (e.g. the Assurer Challenge) and obligations (e.g. in the CAcert Community Agreement) have been approved.
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CAcert Polo Shirts (stiched)

CAcert community is producing stiched polo shirts.
There will be a small blue CAcert logo stiched to the left collar and a larger coloured on on the left side of the breast.
The polo shirt will be from Fruit of the Loom in white without a pocket.
It will be available in the sizes M, L, XL, XXL, 3XL.
The price will be 30 EUR each without shipping costs.
Shipping will be around 10 EUR within the EU and 20 EUR to the rest of the world.
We try to find the cheapest shipping method.

To order a polo shirt please send a signed but not crypted email to merchandising@cacert.org with your name and postal address as well as the number and sizes of polo shirts you want.

Events and Sponsoring

CAcert will be present on the following events:
January 13th – 15th Blacksburg http://wiki.cacert.org/Events/FUDConBlacksburg
January 14th ATE Manchester http://wiki.cacert.org/Events/20120114ATE-Manchester
February 4th -5th FOSDEM Brussels http://wiki.cacert.org/events/FOSDEM2012
February ATE Stockholm scheduled

Along with these events CAcert has lounged an affiliate program with booking.com.
The affiliate program works as followed. If someone uses the link for booking.com from our event pages and he books and uses a hotel, CAcert gets a provision for this booking. The price for the hotel stays the same but you support For more see http://wiki.cacert.org/CAcertInc/Affiliates or on the event pages.

New Board of Directors constituted

After the election of the new board on 2011-11-27 on the Annual General Meeting the new board has now constituted itself. Due to the fact that not enough australian board members were elected a Sub Committee was set up according to CAcert Inc. rules.

The current CAcert Inc. Committee – the Board of Directors – consists of

  • Piers Lauder, AU, President
  • Dirk Astrath, DE, Vice President
  • Jeffrey Frederick, US, Treasurer
  • Tomáš Trnka, CZ, Secretary
  • Raoul Xavier Boerlage, NL, member
  • Ian Grigg, AU, member
  • Kevin Dawson, AU, member

The CAcert Inc. Sub Committee consists of all the members of the CAcert Inc. Committee including the elected members

  • Michael Tänzer, DE, member
  • Werner Dworak, DE, member

Both are supporting the Board of Directors, participate in decisions and carry motions.

Kevin Dawson was appointed as Public Officer. He is the Association representative at the Australian Office of Fair Trading and is the co-acting Treasurer on behalf of CAcert Inc. President.

Strong Concensus on CPS #7.1.2 “Certificate Extensions” adjustments

Policy group voted within the last 2 weeks for the proposed p20111113 CPS #7.1.2 “Certificate Extensions” adjustments with a strong concensus for the proposal.
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