Wien [Metalab] Einladung zum Fellowship-Treffen in Wien

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Liebe Freunde der Freien Software,

am 15. Jänner 2010 findet ein Fellowship-Treffen in Wien statt. Wir treffen uns ab 18:00 Uhr in der Bibliothek im Metalab, Rathausstraße 6.
Die Agenda starten wir um 19:00 Uhr.

Folgende Punkte stehen dieses Mal auf der Tagesordnung:

  • Rückblick Vortrag TU Graz
  • Ausblick 2010
  • GnuPG Keysigning (dezentralisiert), auch CAcert assuren mögl.
  • Diverses
  • gemütliches Beisammensein

Wie immer richtet sich die Einladung an alle, die sich für die FSFE oder für Freie Software interessieren. Wir freuen uns auf eine große Teilnehmerzahl!

Viele Grüße,
—
Das österreichische Team der Free Software Foundation Europe
* Werde ein Fellow der FSFE und verteidige deine Freiheit! *
*** https://www.fsfe.org *** https://fellowship.fsfe.org ***

December 2009 Community Update

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  • 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
  • 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)

Original Wiki Post 2009 December Update

Annual General Meeting

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Today the board has passed the motion m20100103.4 to set the date for January 30th 2010 at 21:00 UTC. It is therefore my pleasure as secretary of CAcert Inc. to invite all members of CAcert to attend this Annual General Meeting.

When: Saturday 2010-01-30 21:00 UTC
Where: irc.cacert.org #agm
Who: All CAcert Inc. Members

Please also remember to pay your dues, since according to current rules you may not otherwise vote.

Regards,
Philipp Dunkel
(Secretary)

CAcert at FOSDEM and CEBIT 2010 – Booths confirmed

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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)
FOSDEM 2010

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)
Linux New Media
CEBIT 2010

CAcert in India

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I’m visiting Delhi and Varanasi beginning of Februari 2010. Is there anyone interested meeting me over there?

If properly planned sufficiently ahead of time, I might be able to manage to get multiple assurers there to get you up to assurer level in one time. But this requires planning and some interest.

Contact me if you’re interested: aphexer at somewhat obfuscated cacert dot org

Support Activity and Error Rates

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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.

an almost empty Triage mailboxThe 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

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CAcert Assurer Training Event Göteborg
——————————————————–
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.
Continue reading →

Discontinuation of “Trusted Third Party” assurances

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Recently a dispute was filed about some confusion with our “Trusted Third Party” procedure. As part of this arbitration the board was asked for some explanatory words on the discontinuation of the TTP. In order to comply with this request and also shed some light on the issue, I have taken on the task of explaining this.

First off there is a misconception, that the board decided to discontinue the TTP. That is a misconception, because the board does not have the authority to do so. However the TTP was discontinued by the policy-group. The reason for this was simply that there was no policy to describe how the TTP procedure worked. As such the practice was outside the policies and needed to be stopped until a policy has been written defining TTP. The policy group has since made several attempts at writing such a policy, but has not yet come to a conclusion.

So I would invite everyone interested in this area, to please join the policy group, which is open to all community members, and help us write this policy and remedy the situation.

After the policy group had made the decision to discontinue several practices that fell outside the Assurance Policy by moving it to policy status the board felt it necessary, in its role as executive organ of CAcert, to enforce that decision. It did so with a motion ordering the ceasing of all assurances not under the Assurance Policy. This motion caused the systems team to terminate these practices.

However at the time it was missed that there was still a page up on the cacert.org website explaining the availability of the TTP process. This page has since been removed.

So to sum up, the board neither had the power nor did it in fact terminate the TTP, it simply enforced a decision by the policy group. However the communication of these facts was sorely lacking.

So to clear things up, and to comply with the Arbitrator order in Dispute a20091118.1 it should be clearly stated that:

The TTP programme is effectively Frozen until a subsidiary policy under the Assurance Policy is written and moved to DRAFT. Until such a time the TTP programme is against the Assurance Policy rules.

Note: although I am currently serving on the CAcert Inc. Board of Directors, I do not have authority to speak for the board. Therefore this article is written solely on my own behalf.

2009 November Community Update

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Original Wiki Post 2009 November Update

Security Party in Zurich, Switzerland on December 11, 2009

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On the evening of Friday December 11, 2009, a security party will be held in Zurich, Switzerland. The main focus of the event will be PGP keysigning, but CAcert assurances will also be available (why else write here? :-). Please refer to the event website (in German) for organizational details. If you would like to participate as an assurer, please register on the CAcert.org wiki.

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Am Freitag Abend 11. Dezember 2009 findet in Zürich, Schweiz, eine Security Party statt. Der Fokus des Anlasses ist PGP Keysigning, es werden aber auch CAcert Assurances durchgeführt (warum sonst hier schreiben? :-). Die organisatorischen Details findest Du auf der Event Website (auf Deutsch). Falls Du als Assurer mitmachen möchtest so registriere Dich bitte auf dem CAcert.org Wiki.