This are some little parts of the history of CAcert and CAcert Inc. Please help, to complete!

Historical key numbers and CAcert's grow

CAcert's history

CAcert Inc. is an incorporated non-profit association registered with New South Wales (NSW), Australia. - It was incorporated by 24 July 2003, with the full association name CAcert Incorporated under the Incorporation No INC9880170. CAcert Inc. has a DUNS number 75-605-6102. (wiki.cacert.org) A Copy of Certificate of Incorporation of CAcert is on this site: http://wiki.cacert.org/CAcertInc?action=show&redirect=CAcertIncorporated

Contents

Beginning

After 161 users in the first year and about 3,000 in the following year, CAcert has in 2006, four years after project start, already 75,000 users with more than 200,000 certificates. The largest spread is found in Germany and the Netherlands, followed by Austria, the USA and Australia. The year 2007 is marked by significant changes in the field of infrastructure and human resource structure, whereby the association will provide the necessary capacity for continued exponential growth. (http://www.kes.info/archiv/online/07-4-054.htm / article as PDF from internet archive)

2003/11/12: NLnet supports the Initiation of CAcert, Inc.
- Donation to CAcert
  CAcert is a young, non-profit organization. CAcert is based in Sydney Australia since it started in July 2003. CAcert signs and distributes free (public key based) e-mail and service authentication certificates and pgp public keys. As such, these certificates establish a Web of Trust in the Open Source certificate services area.
  Several years ago, Thawte initiated a similar approach, but their service is only free for the email certificates used by many browsers. The CAcert initiative goes further, providing non-commercial server certificates signing services by building a Web of Trust community.
  The donation of €1,000 is provided by NLnet in order to stimulate free certificates built upon Open Source software (OpenSSL, Open PKI services, etc.), and as such stimulating Web of Trust based certification communities. (12.11.2003) (https://nlnet.nl/project/cacert/20031112-start.html)
2004/06/22: NLnet provides a grant of up to US$ 16,000 to CAcert for organizing a launch of CAcert at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference
- CAcert at USENIX
  [Announcement from the CAcert team]
  Thanks to a generous grant from our friends at NLnet, CAcert is proud to team up with the folks at USENIX to provide certificates, Assurances, and advice throughout this year's USENIX technical conference -- to be held in Boston, MA (USA) from 26 June to 2 July.
  Our presence at the event will be fairly prominent; so you shouldn't have any trouble spotting our information booth. When you do, and say hi, get signed up for a new account, and/or have your existing account Assured up to 150 points!¹ Your official USENIX program will guide you as to when/where our various "assure-a-thons" will be taking place.
  And don't forget to check your official USENIX program to find out the official times and locations of our first (international!) Board Meeting and our "Birds of a Feather" panel discussion(s) on PKI, X.509, digital privacy/security, et al.
  We look forward to seeing you there!
  The CAcert Team
  ¹) A NOTE ABOUT IDs: To make sure we can give you the maximum number of trust points available, please see the rules for details about what IDs are acceptable for Assurance purposes. Passports and driver licenses (or other government-issued photo IDs) are your best bet. Thanks! (22.6.2004) (https://nlnet.nl/project/cacert/20040622-usenix.html)
2004/10/05: CAcert had a successful grow of European community during SANE 2004.
- The SANE 2004 conference created an excellent opportunity to present the CAcert Free Digital Certificates initiative. The Free Software Bazaar and the SANE Poster session were the meeting points for getting many CAcert Assurances done. The success at the Usenix Technical conference in Boston in July was repeated at this conferences.
  Some statistics: before the SANE conference only 8 Assurers were listed for the Netherlands. Already during the conference the listed number increased rapidly up to 39 on the day the conference was closed. Many Assurers had more as 25 Assurances done. The estimation is that more than 100 CAcert holders reached the Assurer status (over 100 points of trust).
  For other countries (like Greece, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium) CAcert trust holders went home as Assurer in order to increase the Web of Trust in their country. Some Open Source communities picked the initiative up for code signing purposes. Europe is taking the lead in creating the CAcert web of trust.
  In October 2004, the new CAcert web page software is supposed to be activated. For many languages web page translations are required. Persons who signed up for looking into the translation or improvements to the text signed up for Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Danish.
  The CAcert Assurance initiative at SANE was sponsored by NLnet. Thanks to the organizers of SANE for creating the opportunity and help. Thanks to the Dutch CAcert Assurers who made this possible and give their free time for it.
  Lessons learned to improve the Assurance procedure and to improve the Assurance Form have been sent back to CAcert.org. [By Teus Hagen]
2004/11/22: CAcert added over 200 new assurers during the HCC Dagen.
- As a follow up on the CAcert activities at the SANE 2004 conference, the HCC Unix user group created a CAcert booth at the HCC Dagen event.
  Like with all of these conferences we started with good hope and prepared well with 300 empty forms, and assurers from NLUUG, NLnet and HCC Unix manned the booth. That was wrong! In three days more than 1750 assurances were made and over 200 new Dutch assurers were added. To put this number in perspective the current list worldwide count only 800 assurers.
  Many HCC groups have adopted CAcert and will help to expand the web of trust by assuring users at their local meetings (these are open for public). In line with that, a website has been registered to give Dutch support and documentation (http://www.cacert.nl). [Robert Kochheim, november 2004]
2005/03/16: Holland tops CAcert Assurers list.
- CAcert assurers were active during the Dutch Perl Workshop, last February. As a result, another 14 CAcert assurers were added to the already relatively large number of assurers in the Netherlands. This growth was enough to push the USA from the first position in the "per country" list, although that head position lasted only for one day.[Contributed by Teus Hagen]
  With 170 registed assurers, about one third of all listed CAcert people are located in The Netherlands. One reason for that is the effort put in getting people to specify their city and country.
2005/06/10: CAcert presented itself during NLUUG and KDE-PIM meetings, growing the community. Application is being extended with external security tokens.
- At the NLUUG conference "Email and beyond" on May 26 2005, more than 100 attendees got validated as new CAcert Assurancees. A special corner in the exposition space was dedicated to do CAcert assurances and PGP signing, as NLUUG service to its member. Over one third of the attendees where in "The Web Of Trust" at the end of the day.
  The next day, on May 27, NLnet sponsored a special KDE-PIM hackathon in Achtmaal and made sure that the major part of KDE developers made it to Assurer as well.
  On the same day, NLnet CAcert assurers were present on a multi-media OSS event in the TOSti building in Tilburg. From now on, it is easy to get your CAcert validation done with a visit to the TOSti building.
  Developments
  CAcert is busy to collect information and OSS software guidelines for creating and accessing CAcert X.509 certificats on security devices as the GemPlus small sized smartcard and USB reader and the USB eToken of eAladdin.
  The top three countries for listed assurers are: Germany (309), USA (255) and Holland (224). Translation of the CAcert web pages is nearly completed for 24 languages (English, German, and Dutch are ready). In the first week of July there will be an annual association membership meeting. [by Teus Hagen, June 8 2005]
2005/12/02: The Web of Trust is growing fast, with CAcert present on most major Open Source event. more >> (https://nlnet.nl/project/cacert/how.html) nlnet.png
- The "Web of Trust" of CAcert has really got momentum. On almost all major Open Source events, CAcert Assurances are taking place as a rather organised social happening. Some recent events: NLUUG Conferences, EuroOSCON, KDE hackathons, TOSti (Tilburg NL), OSS multimedia event, LinuxWorld, HCC-dagen, Lisa'05 and ApacheCon. For some of these events, NLnet was the initiating factor.
  A special Dutch CAcert web site www.cacert.nl contains information for novice users. The HCC (Dutch Computer Club) Association is the first to receive a CAcert "company" certificate. On LinuxWorld, Ivana Belgers gave a presentation on how to use (CAcert) Digital Certificates and how to do assurances.
  The Web of Trust is currently increasing at a rate of 2500 new users per month. In November 2005, there were 42.000 CAcert users. CAcert's goal is to have PGP Signing and Digital Certificate Assurance meetings taking place as social part of any major event. As such, widening the Web of Trust much further. [Teus Hagen]

2007/03/09: Servers relocated from Australia to The Netherlands.

The CAcert certification service has outgrown its service hosting facility in Sydney, Australia. The CAcert service had to be relocated on very short notice, and was --as intermediate solution-- moved to Austria. Expected is that at the end of March 2007, CAcert will be rehosted in a permanent new facility in The Netherlands.

The dutch foundation "Stichting Oophaga" was erected in February 2007, dedicated to maintain CAcert as highly reliable and highly secure service. Hardware and maintenance was donated by BIT (the secure internet service provision), SUN/AMD (4 servers), Tunix (two servers and two firewalls), Cisco (two switches), and NetApp (NAS disks). Financial and administrative support comes from HCC, the foundation Stichting NLnet, NLUUG, and IAE. (https://nlnet.nl/project/cacert/20070309-moving.html) bit.png

2007/09/14: Equipment moved to Holland. New intermediate board elected. Plans for new regulation, to be discussed at TOP Hackathon.

CAcert has a new board
CAcert has rehosted their CAcert server from Sydney Australia to Holland. To accomplish this, a foundation Stichting Oophaga Foundation was set up. NLnet and other parties sponsor this new foundation.
Oophaga machinery was donated by SUN, Tunix, Net Apps, Cisco, and BIT. It got installed in a rack at the BIT ISP in Ede Holland.
Duane Groth --the initiator of CAcert-- has announced his resignation. In a Special General Meeting, the participants voted on an intermediate board. The board has three members: Greg Rose (chair), Robert Cruikshank (treasurer), and Evaldo Gardenali (secretary). Plans were made to update regulations for membership, policies, finances, and control of operations.
An Advisory team of three (Teus Hagen of NLnet, Ian Grigg -audit, Jens Paul -assurances) is preparing the hackathon "CAcert TOP" on 17-21 September in Germany. NLnet is fully sponsoring this meeting, hotel, and travel assistance.
Plans for several improvements in operations and organisation have been drafted, to be approved at the hackathon. The plans cover assurers training and certification, organisational assurances, PR, housestyling, openess, policies, auditing and acceptance of root certificates in main browser stream, board elections, organizational offices, and responsibilities. (14.9.2007) (https://nlnet.nl/project/cacert/how.html)

Servers moves to the Netherlands

CAcert has rehosted in 2007 their CAcert server from Sydney Australia to Holland. To accomplish this, a foundation Stichting Oophaga Foundation was set up. NLnet and other parties sponsor this new foundation.

Oophaga machinery was donated by SUN, Tunix, Net Apps, Cisco, and BIT. It got installed in a rack at the BIT ISP in Ede, Holland. tunix.png

Duane Groth --the initiator of CAcert-- has announced his resignation. In a Special General Meeting, the participants voted on an intermediate board. The board has three members: Greg Rose (chair), Robert Cruikshank (treasurer), and Evaldo Gardenali (secretary). Plans were made to update regulations for membership, policies, finances, and control of operations.

An Advisory team of three (Teus Hagen of NLnet, Ian Grigg -audit, Jens Paul -assurances) is preparing the hackathon "CAcert TOP" on 17th - 21st September in 2007 Germany. NLnet is fully sponsoring this meeting, hotel, and travel assistance. (https://nlnet.nl/project/cacert/20070914-status.html)

The foundation "Stichting Oophaga" facilitated technical solutions to Internet privacy initiatives as CACert. In 2015, these tasks were passed on to Secure-U! e.V. http://www.secure-u.de

Statistics

Head offices in New South Wales

Please note, this is a page about the history of CAcert. Do not use this historical addresses to contact CAcert.
This were our postal addresses. Our offices are not necessarily located here.

CAcert Inc. - P.O. Box 75 - Banksia NSW 2216 (2003 - 2005*) map
CAcert Inc. - P.O. Box 81 - Banksia NSW 2216 (2005 - 2007*) map
CAcert Inc. - P.O. Box 4107 - Denistone East NSW 2112 (2007-2012*) map
CAcert Inc. - P.O. Box 66 - Oatley NSW 2223 (2012-2017) map
CAcert Inc. - 10, Airfield Avenue - Murwillumbah NSW 2484 (2017-2020) map
CAcert Inc. - Clos Belmont 2, 1208 Geneva, Switzerland current headquaters map

* Following Internet Archive

Committee

On this site, you find all the former members of the committee of CAcert. Inc. since the first days.

Growth by year

See the statistics about the growth by year since 2002 and the last twelve month here: https://secure.cacert.org/stats.php

Company	Sponsorship Package	Estimated Valuation p/a	Year	Comments	Logo
nlnet	Pirmasens audit	18k 12k == 30k	2004 2007	2 x once-off deals to fund CAcert, not "commercial sponsorship"
bit	rack space + bandwidth	5000	2007 - today	power is paid for
Sun	4 machines	2 x 200 + 2 x 400 == 1200	2007	machines are old / retired
Tunix	managed firewall service, 2 machines	2000-3000	2007	machines are old / retired
NLUUG	brand-new Dell rack-server		2009
Systemhaus Mobach, Echteld NL	two alix2d1 boards		2014
Abil'I.T., Luxembourg LU / New York US	IBM 3550 M2 Server		2020
Flyback Sàrl Housing Services, Genève CH	Office services		2021