CAcert AGM and New Board, Rules changes accepted

On 2011-11-27 CAcert held its Annual General Meeting. Minutes will be published soon on the wiki.

A new board was elected. We are happy to announce the new CAcert board

Piers Lauder, AU
Dirk Astrath, DE
Jeffrey Frederick, US
Michael Tänzer, DE
Raoul Xavier Boerlage, NL
Werner Dworak, DE
Tomas Trnka, CZ

During the AGM CAcert’s annual report and the financial report 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.

During the AGM, 3 special resolutions were presented, first to bring CAcert Inc rules in compliance with Association Act 2009 and 2 more rules changes, that fixed a minor bug. The rule changes have been accepted in a strong concensus.

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.

Changes at CAcert: New Points Counting

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We are proud to announce recent changes in the CAcert website. Although there have been quite a few changes in the past, mostly they have happened “behind the scenes”. Today we can announce more visible changes:

1. Change to My Points page
The Point list in the menu under “My Details” -> “My Points” will be enhanced. Main Point is: The Assurance Points received and given will be allocated in a new way. The crucial point was the working total of Assurance Points allocated to the Assuree. Previously, only the beneficial points were displayed, and points allocated in Assurances were rounded down if in excess of 100.

From now on, all allocated points are displayed. The Assuree can still only benefit up to a maximum of 100 Assurance Points. As an Assurer, the member may benefit up to a maximum of 50 Experience Points by assuring other members. The new list will display the calculation much more transparently. Please have a look at the new points listing at https://www.cacert.org/wot.php?id=15

2. Tverify points revoked
Along with this change, all points allocated under the old Tverify program will be revoked in the near future. The Tverify program to transfer points allocated by Thawte Notaries across to CAcert members was stopped sometime ago. Tverify points cannot be verified by CAcert (for example, they cannot be distinguished between the different Notaries), and therefore, these points will be revoked soon. If you are unsure about your level of assurance, we recommend that you seek further assurance from CAcert Assurers.

By performing these measures, we take another step towards a successful audit. Passing the audit is an important building block to be accepted as a CA in the internet browsers.

3. Check your Alert Settings
We would like to advise you of another important fact: In the future, we intend to send you further newsletters with our most important news, every few months. This present newsletter is being sent to all CAcert Community Member in a one-off mailing. For the future, please check your settings online at www.cacert.org under “My Details” -> “My Alert Settings” or at https://www.cacert.org/account.php?id=36 and choose which newsletters you want to receive. In the future, we intend to rely on your settings so as to send our newsletter only to those who wish to receive the specified information.

Best regards,
Alexander Bahlo
Officer for Public Relations
CAcert.org

Further information on the New Points counting:
https://wiki.cacert.org/FAQ/NewPointsCount

Assurance during Open Radar Conference, Szczecin, Poland

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Some assurers from Szczecin will arrive at Open Radar Conference, which will take place at Silver Hotel in Szczecin, Poland on next thursday, 1st December (conference continues on Friday, at Technopark Pomerania, Szczecin). After short talk about CAcert and certificates (which will start at 12:00), around 13:45, we will be showing how to use digital certificates and assuring applicants.

Annual General Meeting 2011-11-27

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CAcert Inc, the association within the Community, will held the AGM on Sunday 2011-11-27 21:00 UTC. Which makes it evening in Europe, afternoon in the Americas, and tomorrow morning in Australia. The meeting will be held in CAcert’s IRC channel #AGM

The agenda and preperations you’ll find under: AGM 2011-11-27

There are 3 special resolutions on the agenda:

Replace Association Act 1984 Links with Accociation Act 2009 Links within current
Make CAcert Inc Rules compliant to Accociation Act 2009 rules
Correct Error 13.1
Delete Common Seal

Downtime scheduled for CAcert webserver on Nov 23, 2011

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The CAcert main webserver will be unavailable for about one hour on Wednesday November 23, 2011, starting at 10:00 UTC. A database update is scheduled to take place on that day between 10:00 UTC and 11:00 UTC. If you are interested in the technical details, please check https://bugs.cacert.org/view.php?id=976.

We expect that the update will be completed within one hour. During the update the website cannot be accessed, and no certificates can be issued or revoked. Other CAcert services (CRL, OCSP, mailing lists, wiki etc) will remain available as usual.

CAcert @ OpenRheinRuhr, Oberhausen, DE

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German text first, english version below.

Am 12. und 13. November findet die OpenRheinRuhr im Rheinischen Industriemuseum direkt am Hauptbahnhof in Oberhausen statt. Eine Spitzenlocation für eine Veranstaltung über freie Software, bei der CAcert nicht fehlen darf.

Jeder Interessierte kann sich am Stand von CAcert über kostenfreien Zertifikate, darunter SSL-Serverzertifikate und Client-Zertifikate für sichere E-Mail-Kommunikation informieren. Fragen zur Benutzung und zum Einsatz der Zertifikate werden ebenfalls beantwortet.

English version

On November, 12th and 13th, the OpenRheinRuhr will take place at Rheinisches Industriemuseum directly located at Oberhausen central station. The Industriemuseum is an amazing location for an event about free and open source software. Of course, CAcert presents itself on this event.

Who wants to get informed about free certificates, e.g. SSL-Server certificates, or client certificates for secure e-mail communication is invited to meet CAcert members for discussion on CAcerts’ OpenRheinRuhr booth. Questions about the use of certificates and necessary know-how will be answered.

CAcert at T-DOSE, Eindhoven, Netherlands

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On the coming week-end, November, 5th/6th, Technical Dutch Open Source Event (T-DOSE) will take place at the Fontys University of Applied Science in Eindhoven, Netherlands (about one hour drive from Duisburg, Germany, and Brussels, Belgium).

Who wants to get informed about free certificates, e.g. SSL-Server certificates, or client certificates for secure e-mail communication is invited to meet CAcert members for discussion on CAcerts’ T-DOSE booth. Questions about the use of certificates and necessary know-how will be answered.

The location and some navigation to Eindhoven train station can be found on Google Maps.

Próxima CAParty Madrid 2011, 14 de octubre 18h

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El próximo viernes 14 de octubre 2011 a las 18 horas tendrá lugar en Medialab-Prado (Calle Alameda 15, 28014 Madrid) la CAParty Madrid 2011, una fiesta de firmas PGP y CAcert.

Este tipo de eventos sirven a los usuarios de PGP y CACert para certificar sus identidades presencialmente y firmarse las correspondientes claves públicas, ampliándose así las redes de confianza de PGP y CACert. En el evento estarán presentes al menos tres notarios de CACert, quienes podrán otorgar puntos suficientes a los usuarios presentes, que servirán no solo para certificar suficientemente su identidad, sino también para crear nuevos notarios de esta red de confianza.

CAParty Madrid 2011 cuenta con la página web
http://caparty.geek.org.es/ donde se explican los detalles técnicos
del desarrollo de la jornada de firmas y una reseña en el wiki de
CAcert
http://wiki.cacert.org/Events/Medialab-Prado2011

La participación en la jornada es completamente libre y gratuita.

Acerca de CACert
CACert es una Entidad Certificadora conducida por la comunidad, que emite certificados digitales al público en general, de forma gratuita. Estos certificados, que pueden utilizarse para firmar correo electrónico, identificar sitios web o firmar aplicaciones, son similares a los que emiten otras entidades certificadoras, prestando un servicio cuyo precio rara vez es gratuito. CACert, por el contrario, emite sus certificados gratuitamente y utiliza las redes de confianza para certificar la identidad de los titulares de los certificados. Cualquier persona puede registrarse en la página web y comenzar a utilizar certificados, aunque para poder certificar su identidad en los mismos necesitará que algunos notarios de la red la verifiquen en un encuentro personal o en una fiesta de firmas.

http://wiki.cacert.org/SpanishCommunity

“Hyphen Rules” clarified in PracticeOnNames

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Recently the hyphen rules in PracticeOnNames has been overworked and clarified.
Since this topic is surrounded by a great deal of confusion and unconfirmed rumors Assurers might have a look at it.

CAcert at Worldwide Software Freedom Day (SFD) Sat Sept 17th

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Saturday, 17th 2011, the worldwide Software Freedom Day or “Software Freedom International” (SFI) has been announced. In several cities around the world activities will be presented.

CAcert has representives at least in Cologne and Hamburg (both Germany).

The Hamburg event is held by Lug Balista.
The event at Cologne is at Coworking Cologne. Alexander Bahlo from CAcert will give a presentation “Signieren von Dokumenten in OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice”

Event Details Cologne
Event Details Hamburg