[Discuss] free certs everywhere

[Tom Metro]

Richard Pieri wrote:
> Tom Metro wrote:
>> Probably a big reason this never happened is that when CAs were being
>> established, all that existed were basic certs.
> 
> The early certificate authorities...were all about identity
> verification. ...the handful of extant CAs bothered with things like
> background checks to ensure that certificate requests were valid.

Yes, exactly. "Basic" was the wrong choice of words, but they were basic
in the sense that they didn't included the extended validation
properties, which didn't exist then. And you're correct that the
procedure for getting a "basic" cert then more closely resembled the
verification procedures that exist today for extended validation certs.

The point stands that in the beginning, there weren't choices for cert
levels. And as you point out, there were significant labor costs
involved for what they did provide. So it would be illogical for someone
to mandate that they give away that service.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/