Policy-Discussion

[Philipp Guehring <philipp AT cacert.org>]

Hi,
> > I am against it, since we still have users that require Class3
> > certificates for their applications.
> > One such application I know of is http://registeredcommons.org/
>
>   But way do they need a class 3 certificate? can't they move to class 1?
Because they need to authenticate validated identities, they have to
make sure that the people have been assured.
RegisteredCommons tells their users to go to CAcert, to get assured, to
get a Class3 certificate from CAcert, and to use that class3 certificate
to login on the registeredcommons.org website to use their service.
>
> > There might be others as well that I have not heard about yet.
>
>   Certainly. The thing is why people need a class 3 certificate instead
> a class 1 certificate, considering classes are weakly defined and are
> not an standard? (or maybe I understood it all wrong).
CAcert class1 means that at least the email address / domain is verified.
CAcert class3 means that the email address/domain is verified and that
the person has been assured to at least 50 points.

> > Therefore please consider my proposal to discourage our users and
> > migrate our users to Class1 where possible, but continue issueing Class3
> > for those that need it.

>   The problem is while the Class3 certificate exists, the problem will
> continue. So we stop using it now (and maybe revoke it at 2012), or we
> continue as we are... I don't see a benefit in discouraging its usage,
> but still allowing it.
We have a few users that currently require class3 certificates. If we
stop issueing them, those users will have a problem, since they can't
use their services anymore.
So the benefit for us is that we will not have angry users afterwards.

All the others will most likely be happy if they don't see any Class3
certificates anymore. So if we discourage people to issue them, then we
will reduce the likelyhood that someone stumbles across them and asks
questions, which solves the perceivance problem.

Best regards,
Philipp Gühring