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German Gov't, Free Software, and Secure E-mail
friday2k writes "There is a nice Article on Newsforge describing how the German Government moves ahead on looking into Free Software solutions for government agencies. And you need a standard, secure, email client for this." Basically, they are funding some good secure e-mail - but making sure that it works with stuff like Kmail.
By doing this, they are saving their taxpayers a bundle (easily billions) by not spending so much on licensing fees from Sun or Microsoft. That money saved can go to greater things like making better schools, etc.
The article starts out saying that Congress wants to outlaw Open source via the SSSCA.
Perhaps congress should visit our German buddies and see how a switch to OSS can benefit the American public. A little bit of seeing what's happening abroad could go a long way.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I would advocate that governments only use open source projects...
the fact that the DoJ was supposedly at war with M$, while at the same time handing over some of M$'s largest contracts seems insane...
I would almost call it a chuch/state issue...
All the more reason for Germany to be interested in encryption. The U.S. might be shoving the genie back in the bottle for normal citizens, but you can bet that the government itself will continue to use encryption.
Likewise the Germans know that they can't run their government without encryption, but they realize that they can't expect the U.S. based software industry to supply it, and they can't really trust the U.S. based software industry not to create backdoors in the software they do supply. So the Germans are doing the only sane thing. They are writing their own crypto programs.
This is why the U.S. will fail to crack down on encryption. The genie is loose, and there are too many people that want it to stay loose.
I'm gonna karma whore for a little bit, and c&p an email to the kmail developer's list that came in today. Text follows.
:-).
Dear list,
we are happy to announce that the German
"Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik"
(Federal Agency for IT Security, BSI)
contracted us (Intevation, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult and g10 Code)
to make sure that Free Software for their email security
standard Sphinx will be created.
Sphinx basically consists of S/MIME, a PKIX compatible X.509
profile, together with certificate revocation lists (CRLs)
based on LDAP. The code developed will be modular
allowing inclusion in several MUAs released under the GNU GPL.
Part of the contract with the BSI is the inclusion in mutt
and KMail.
The initial project pages can be reached from the URL below.
We wanted to get the good news out to you as fast as possible.
Expect more information to get released on the website or on the
corresponding mailing lists.
We plan to do the development in an open manner suitable
for Free Software projects. We want to handle the project in a
way that it will leverage and add to the work of other developers
and ask for your collaboration. The BSI pays us to ensure that their
specs are followed precisely and the result passes strict tests.
This is the first time the BSI contracts for Free Software development
and the experiences they make will be important.
We will demonstrate the power of commercial Free Software.
www.gnupg.org/aegypten
So, basically they are adding ldap support (w00t!), S/Mime, X.509, and CRL support to Kmail and mutt, using the GPL and working together with the main developers to make sure it gets included. Very cool, if I do say so myself.
(and yes, I know there is already s/mime support for mutt, but iirc it is via a patch. dunno about ldap/x.509/crl, I use kmail
Hope that clears some questions up.
About 6 months ago I stumbled across an awesome GTK+ mail/news reader very similar in look to Netscape Messenger (and far superior to XFMail) called Sylpheed (http://sylpheed.good-day.net/). It'll handle as many accounts as you want, supports threading and image view through gdk-pixbuf, is extremely fast (and decently configurable), and I've never had it crash on me. Some distributions are starting to pick it up now, and it's included in Mandrake 8.1, though I usually compile myself from source. I'd suggest giving it a look.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
The City of Turku, the oldest and one of the largest cities in Finland, is planning on a switch to Linux + OpenOffice in order to save the XP license money. Links here and here.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.