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• 2022-07-07

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Committee Meeting 2022-07-07

The meeting will take place at 18:00 UTC in the IRC channel #board-meeting on the CAcert IRC network.

Feel free to add a business item within the acceptance period of 48 hours or your question to the board below. Non-committee members: the committee may choose to convert any business proposed as a question in the questions section.

Agenda

Signs that appear in the agenda
Formulated motion on your topic. It will be put to the vote. Adjustments may be made before the vote. A motion must be submitted for resolutions!
Information for your attention. Does not need to be explained or discussed at the meeting. Purpose: Everyone is up to date.

1. Preliminaries
   1. Chair opens the Committee Meeting

   2. Who is making minutes? ### (Writing minutes in real time)

   3. Chair asks whether cacert-board-private or cacert-board maillist includes any items that need to be disclosed to Members.

   4. Accept minutes from 2. June 2022 "I move to accept the minutes of the committee meeting of 2nd of June 2022."

2. Business D R A F T

   Acceptance of new business items no later than 48 hours before the start of the committee meeting!

   1. Quick decisions

      1. Maybe* "I move to accept the background check for Gero T." (*the BGC is under way, decision can be taken if it arrives before the meeting, if not, decision to be taken on July 7th)

   2. Quick infos

      1. CCA update has been initiated. (ad new IBAN in Feb, review in March, sent in spring after new firewall installed) XXX ANP. NACH ANTW D.A: XXX

      2. Tax exemption: on the way

      3. Wiki Admin: Names are trasnferred to Mario for Wiki edit access. see here; Secretary asked about the state of affairs at the beginning of July.

   3. Finance team (Michael)

      1. Bank account statements for the 2021/2022 financial year are on hand.

      2. New ERP: Info: State of affairs
   4. Hosting Expense and CRL
      1. In our most recent bill from BIT, they charged us for excess usage, which they have never done before. Critical Team reports that the excess is largely, or completely, due to the downloads of the CRL data ( 9+Meg per transaction ).
      2. In the past, Critical Team has recommended that the CRL data be hosted elsewhere, but still under the control of Critical Team.
      3. Discussion

      4. Motion: ........

   5. OpenID Connect (Brian) (integration / what is done / what will be done until end of year / Board asks whether there is anything that they can do to assist)

      1. Brian has been in communication with Jan, and Brian is working on completing the two modules that Jan did not provide. They are "client registration" and "user management." The first is the mechanism for a foreign web site to get connected to our system and the second is for users to decide how their identity will be used at a particular web site. (Brian)

      1. At present, there is a need for people who are willing to edit and create appropriate documentation for various audiences. --> involve partner organisations? e.g. via mailing list (Linux Australia comes to mind, also x, y, z?)

      2. Update
         1. A message was sent to the mailing lists CAcert and CAcert Board Public, with no response at this point.
         2. Messages were sent to other Linux organisations, with similar lack of response.
         3. Does the Board feel that I (Brian) should mention payment when I repeat our call for volunteers, since there has been no response to the first message?
         4. It has been recommended that I (Brian) proceed with completing the coding, and ask for volunteers again afterwards. I will do so.
   6. Future of secureU e.V. (Information)

      1. Secretary got in touch with Mark O. for paperwork. Next step: Sign the contract on behalf of Cacert Inc.

   7. Background Check (Ted)

      1. BGC for Gero: Interview happend (by Ted&Etienne), report will be sent to committee soon.

      2. BGC for Peter is initated. (date searching; Interview by Ted&Egal)

      3. BGC for Kim, Matthias and Sascha are initated. (address transfered to BGCer)

   8. Events

      1. Froscon https://www.froscon.org

         1. CAcert @ Froscon: https://wiki.cacert.org/Events/FrOSCon2022

         2. Please ask friends to subscribe to Froscon

   9. New CSR software (Ted)

      1. Brian and Dirk have been looking at possible updates for this software. There appear to be two current options, one from Jan.
   10. Software reviews

       1. Thank you for the contributions at https://nextcloud.cacert.org/apps/files/?dir=/CAcert%20board/Work%20products&openfile=5961 It will be used for the upcoming mailings. The secretary will update the original in the wiki: https://wiki.cacert.org/engagement

   11. Remote Assurance (Brian)

       1. Discussion in Policy Group is refreshed https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-policy/2022-04/msg00000.html

       2. Create a remote assurance sub committee (RASC)

       3. Brian envisaged writing a version of the "modified" Policy paragraphs, and post that to Policy Group.

          1. Dirk reported that Eva, in conversation, offered to work on this, but not before late June, at the earliest.
   12. Hardware renewal plan (Michael)

       1. The committee will take time to discuss the equipment renewal proposal, brought forward by Michael, when he is present.

       2. Dirk planned to replace the broken alix-board (10/100) to apu-board (1 Gbps) for firewall fw02 within the next two weeks, and perhaps the second firewall next time he visits Bit in May. Reports!!

       3. Frederic proposes to go with Dirk to Ede at BIT in May, to mount an extra processor and its cooler on the server Brent gave us, which is now running as Infra03. Dirk proposes to take advantage of Michael's presence in Europe in May, to visit BIT together. Update!!

       4. Who is taking care of this project?
       5. Who will start to write a draft?
       6. Critical Team recommends that an HSM module be purchased soon to upgrade the operations of CAcert's signer, which is far out of date.
   13. Annual General Meeting

       1. Fix the date (Commitee) "I move to fix ...day, xx.xx.2022, xx:00 UTC for the Annual General Meeting."

       2. Start Reports (Teams, Secretary, Treasurer); secretary has to contact team leaders
3. Question Time

   Questions from CAcert.org community members can be added until beginning of committee meeting! As well questions can be asked at "Question Time", without added question here.

   1. "Question One." added by Your Name Comment: Replace "Question One" by your Question and add your name

      • ..
   2. Closing
      1. Agree on date of the next Committee Meeting: 7. July 2022
      2. Agree on the following meeting dates: 4. Aug. 2022, 1. Sept., 6. Okt., 3. Nov. 2022 (keep date free, can be changed if necessary)
   3. To remember: Goals 2021/2022 (propositions by board 2020/2021) - Each goal needs a responsible person on the board who keeps an eye on it and reports regularly, keeps in touch with the responsible people.
      • push OrgA (Guy)
      • expand PR (Alex cannot do this, wants to hand over)
      • support SecureU (find an active board member for them in Germany)
      • expand background check
      • simplify the certificate creation (this enables the start of various projects from the pipeline)
      • remote assurance, if accepted by the community;
      • software development and testing
      • delivering the OpenID Connect integration, for which CAcert is funded by the RIPE NCC.
   4. Not to forget: Staffing the teams
      1. Applicants to the Infrastructure team
      2. Applicants to the Development team
      3. Applicant to the Critical team

1. Access to local systems for board members

1. Tasks assigned to Board Members and others

1. Software Team

   1. Issue 1502: Adapt the UI at CAcert.org to deal with the "keygen" feature having been removed in browsers

   2. Issue 1482: Limit validity period of new HTTPS certificates to one year

   3. Issue 1444: PHP - Brian

   4. Issue 1417: Keygen / new CSR software - Bernhard

2. Organisation Assurance
   1. How to relance OrgA? (Guy)
3. Grant applications

   1. Protopype Fund https://prototypefund.de/en/ (mail to SW Board only)

      1. The Prototype Fund is a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). This is for residents of Germany only. We could create a group of people that work on a project for CAcert (with all support of the others in the background). It runs for two more years, every 6 month.
      2. Infra does not see any acute need at the moment, and does not have the capacity to provide qualified support.
      3. There are some ideas for software, but in infra's view there is still a lot of conceptual and preparatory work missing. What Infra could imagine is financing people to carry out a requirements analysis and write a requirements and test specification. This could then be used as a basis for a new implementation of the CAcert software (WebDB, Signer and perhaps other things like CATS). But these are just a few ideas of JanDD and he cannot currently recommend any people who would be suitable for this. Potential candidates would have to deal intensively with the existing software on the one hand and with the underlying policies on the other, and would have to identify a lot of missing information, ask for it and make assumptions for discussion. This requires very good analytical and communication skills and a high level of stamina.

1. Blockchain

   1. see here: https://wiki.cacert.org/Brain/CAcertInc/Committee/MeetingAgendasAndMinutes/2018-03-01/ideas#Blockchain (waiting for answer from IanG)

Minutes Committee meeting - 2022-07-07

Participants

Members of the Committee:

Present, by alphabetical order

Etienne Ruedin

Kim Nilsson

Sascha Ternes

Absent or silent, by alphabetical order

Brian McCullough

Frédéric Dumas

Michael Richardson

Wacław

Members of the CAcert community and other guests

Having been active during the meeting, by alphabetical order

Aleš Kastner - not yet

Dirk Astrath

Committee meeting - 2022-07-07

1.1 Opening

Chair - Etienne, opens the meeting.

1.2 Kim takes minutes, using text in Nextcloud.

1.3 No info from mailing lists.

1.4 Minutes from 2 June ok? Etienne, Kim - Aye Sasha?

Business

2.1.1 Quick decisions: No answer from Gero until now. Etienne pings him once a month.

2.2.1 CCA update has been initiated.

2.2.2 Tax exemption: on the way

2.2.3 Wiki Admin: Names are transferred to Mario for Wiki edit access. see here; Secretary asked about the state of affairs at the beginning of July.

2.3.1 Bank account statements for the 2021/2022 financial year are on hand.

2.4 - Hosting expense and CRL

2.4.1 Only one invoice high. Numbers back to normal again now.

2.4.2 CRL is run on Dirk's server, low traffic. Still some traffic on Bit, not clear why.

2.5 - OpenID Connect

2.5.1 Brian & Jan communicating. Working on completing modules.

2.5.2 Still looking for people to document when modules are usable.

2.6.1 Moving forwards on the paperwork.

2.7 BGC

2.7.1 Things are moving forward, albeit slowly.

2.8 Events

2.8.1 Froscon - Eva S has been accepted to present about authentication with CAcert vs alternatives.

2.9 CSR - no news

2.10.1 Software reviews: yesterday more patches installed as in the last 3 years!

2.11.1 Remote assurance - Eva S shown interest, and Brian is communicating with EvaS, but delayed because of Froscon.

2.12 Hardware renewal

2.12.2 Dirk upgraded both firewalls to Gbit. Second Pi installed, as backup/replacement for sun3/sun4. sun2 was moved to sun1. Jan now has access to most hardware. Not the signer (shouldn't have), nor sun3 (soon to be replaced). raid on sun2 not feeling well. Luckily after the move to sun1.

2.12.6 Dirk and Jan has one HSM each, and will start testing which will be best for the future.

2.13 Annual General Meeting

2.13.1 Etienne & Dirks suggests 5th or 12th November 2022. Will be discussed within board first. Dirk reminds that invoices for CAcert Inc must also be sent early enough.

2.13.2 Etienne will contact team leaders about reports from each team. Explains he would prefer reports with fewer words than no reports at all.

"To all team leaders and team members, volunteers: start with you annual report. This is not a book, but just a short message, what you did. So that a greater audience knows about you and maybe someone could be interested and join you!"

3 - Question Time

3.1 And now it's question time. All guests are kindly invited to address their questions to the Board. We will answer everything possible without delay. Please, who has the first question?

3.2 Next Committee meeting, August 4, 2022, 18:00 UTC.

Etienne calls the meeting to an end 19:24 UTC.

Logfile

Logfile from meeting 2022-07-07

Motions

• https://motion.cacert.org/motions/m20210806.1

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