You enrolled at CAcert some time ago. You have been a member of the CAcert
community ever since. In their name, a non-profit association (CAcert Inc.)
operates the necessary infrastructure and finances it from membership fees
and donations.

Arbitration has allowed this email to be sent to all members of the CAcert
community, including those who have not agreed to receive newsletters, as
it contains essential information about the current state and the future of
CAcert.org and CAcert Inc. (Ruling a20190420.1)

In the past few years there have been some changes. Let's Encrypt offers
free SSL certificates, which are recognized by most browsers thanks to a
cross signature. This raises the question of whether CAcert is still needed
at all. We are convinced of it. The advantage of CAcert's certificates is
the personal verification of those certificates by members of the Web of
Trust. They can be used for identification, for signing documents or
e-mails, for encryption, etc. In addition, we see good application
possibilities in enterprises by means of Organisation Assurance (OrgA),
which can also generate income and stabilise our finances.

Do you share our view that CAcert is still useful today?  If so, then read
on!

We have outlined above some areas where we see the future of CAcert. If you
have any other ideas, please write to us. Your ideas are important to
CAcert's teams.

CAcert went through a major crisis in 2016. You may not have noticed it,
because of the resilience of our procedures and the dedication and
commitment of our teams. Apart from the new focus, a lot has happened in
the operational area in recent months:
- CAcert has a working support team again
- the software team is active again, fixes bugs and works on
improvements
- some of our systems have been upgraded from six to ten year obsolete
versions to July 2019 levels
- a new SHA256 signed root certificate has replaced the old MD5
certificate
- the assurer test (CATS) is now also available in French and Czech

Of course, all this always takes time to be done, time required of our
small group of core volunteers. And time is money, because day and night
our servers continue to run, needing electric power... The cost for this,
three thousand Euros per year, is actually very little to supply over
360,000 people with free certificates. But to be completely honest, if we
can't double the donations this year, we won't need any more reorientation,
but we have to pull the plug at the end of the year.

Therefore a small request:

Since you have read this far, CAcert seems to be worth something to you.
Therefore we ask you today for your personal support. This is a support
which CAcert needs now. And well, let's play fair: "I'll do that next week"
is a kind of negative answer.

- Your support can be financial:

-- A donation of 20, 50 or 100 euros (francs, dollars) (if possible on
a regular basis) already helps CAcert.  We accept both Paypal  Bank
account donations. See https://blog.cacert.org/  for more information.
-- As well, you may look for, and invite a corporate sponsor to support
CAcert's work.
-- In addition, when you book your business trips and holidays please
use our partner Booking.com https://www.booking.com/index.html?aid=346253
-- Become a member of the CAcert Inc. association. Applications with
postal address to: secretary@cacert.org

- If you feel better at providing your skills than your money:

You are more than welcome too! Under the assumption that enough of the
others will provide the money. :-)
Then get involved in one of the teams. There are technical and
non-technical areas, where even small handouts are a great help for running
our operations, if they are made regularly and with a long term commitment
in mind.

-- We are in need of a Treasurer who will maintain our small account,
and doesn't even need to regularly attend meetings. A multi-year
involvement helps better. You feel like being a candidate? Please contact
the secretary@cacert.org
-- Have you been a system administrator in your professional life, and
may like to share a few hours of your time with us? Please contact the
secretary@cacert.org
-- You may help by assisting with copywriting the main pages of our
Wiki and making them easier to read. https://wiki.cacert.org (contact:
wiki-admin@cacert.org)
-- You may join our web site translators team. contact:
https://lists.cacert.org/wws/arc/cacert-translations
-- Have convoluted legal issues ever been your daily bread and butter?
You may help in arbitration! Please contact the secretary@cacert.org.
-- Joining the development team would be too much to ask, but you could
adopt a bug and propose your patch.
https://bugs.cacert.org/my_view_page.php ; please join the developers'
mailing list: https://lists.cacert.org/wws/info/cacert-devel
-- You may become an Organisation Assurer and offer CAcert's services
to organisations, companies or institutions; just have a look at:
https://wiki.cacert.org/OrganisationAssurance

We would like to thank you very much for your participation, help and
cooperation. At the moment, there are strong uncertainties about CAcert
that cannot stay neglected because of the state of finances. But if each of
the thousands of CAcert members lifts only a little finger, we will be able
to achieve great things!

Best regards

Brian McCullough            Etienne Ruedin
President CAcert Inc.      Secretary CAcert Inc.


PS. Please don't think too long, do something today - next month it might
be too late.

PPS. If you are one of that people who reads only the last paragraph: We
urgently need your help as a system administrator, arbitrator, donor, board
member or on one of the many small tasks to not closing down CAcert at the
end of the year. Please write to the secretary@cacert.org