>My entire reason for taking an active role in this discussion was in the
>hope that a small investment of time now would result in a large savings
>of both time and uncertainty later. I think I have failed, since it's
>turned into a large investment of time now, with all too much uncertainty.
>It'll be easier to just go back to watching and rev my software later if
>necessary. At this point, this WG is no longer at the leading edge.
>
No the Postal Sericve is part of this group; its in very close contact
with the industry and the market, and gov, policy making for the
commercial activities between Gov and industry. It also hopes to
compete with others in the commercial market per se.
The positioning is very astute: all the *difficulties* of DNs, and
certiifcates go away - the postal service will handle this as a service
for you. Application builders who wish their users to have access to
certificates, in order to assure key distribution and all that entails
therefrom, can obtain UI forms programs which build the necessary mail
messages to the PO. several such UIs are packaged to ensure the
certification process is valid, and to adapt the service to the many
and varied modes of service demanded by corporate and small companies.
if you wish the source code - to rewrite for your platform, or style of
doing things, then this is also freely available.
At this economic point, your user is on his own to do with the
certificate what he or she will. Or, the user can buy additional
services for trusted timestamping, or authentication. However, there is
no requirement to further interact with the Postal Service. I suspect
many companies will, just as they now interact with Visa and
similar third-parties.
The greate thing about this activity is that its available over the
internet, and exploits the flexiblility of X.500 information model and
authenication framework to put itself in the position of being able to
adapt simultaneously to many corporate needs though a single service
access point.