I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for the effort you have put in in the past, especially as it is no longer 'part of your job'. It was quite strange to get this email just now as a lot of it parallels what I have been thinking about for a while myself. Namely more active development of the OCF and associated code.
I think it is clear that the OCF organization is not doing much and after some initial sterling work, for which we are all very grateful, development of the OCF has stagnated. Indeed there was an email a while back from an OCF member suggesting it was disbanded.
I would like to suggest that the OCF code is moved to a source forge (or similar) project.
I can't devote loads of time to it but at least I use the OCF in my Job on a (nearly) daily basis and I feel I should give something back so I will put myself forward as one of the project admins or developers (any more volunteers?).
I realize that the OCF code license as it stands would allow anyone to copy the code and start developing the code separately but I think that would be a mistake and it would be much better if the OCF web site was changed to redirect people to the new project. The downloads would come from the new area, also updated documentation and a development mailing list, etc. We can seek permission for this although i'm not sure who we need to contact.
Hopefully we can rekindle the development of, and interest in, the OCF.
What do others think?
cheers
Brian
Christophe Muller wrote:
Hello, This message summarizes what Gemplus can do to help people who are finding bugs in Gemplus CardServices or CardTerminals or in the framework (they are not a lot there). And what we can do is... not much I guess. I will explain why.The components that are posted on our web are not maintained any more by Gemplus. What I would advice to people that are finding bugs, is to try to fix the bug and to patch/recompile the CardServices, for which they have the sources, and what I would request is that they post the patch (i.e., diff of the sources) to the OCF mailing-list, so that it would at least be available publicly. There was not enough customer demand for OCF support and as you might know, Gemplus at the end of this year, would have suppress around 3000 jobs on 7000 during the last three years. I still believe personaly that working in Java with well designed (OO) and high-level components is the best way to go (and not just low-level APDU drivers like in Microsoft's PC/SC. Note: actually, it's inside the "MUSCLE" project ("Unix" free software PC/SC) that most high-level work is done today with smart cards, such as a digital signature framework -smartsign-). But today the smart card industry is just struggling to survive (and you will find even less amount of support for Java programmers among our competitors!) and is not in the mood for suporting innovative developers! (which might well be a mistake, but neither you or me have the power to change this fact). We at Gemplus have made the choice, concerning Java support, to: 1) offer a minimum of both low-level *and* high-level component for OCF (i.e., Serial pure-java CT, fixes on the IBM PC/SC bridge CT, APDIO CT -connection to the Sun JavaCard simulator-, and FileSystem CS, Crypto CS, SIM 11.11/11.14 CS, Generic Javacard API -included in OCF-, Generic DB CS -also included in OpenCard). Plus two FAQs and, when we could, support in forums and on the mailing-list. 2) to actively participate in the OpenCard technical committee to the definition of the framework (in fact, we were the most active member after IBM, who made the greatest contribution), and 3) to choose a very liberal license for our components (i.e., a BSD style license) that allows people to either use and modify them, maintain them in free software style, distribute, incorporate them in products, even sell them, whatever ! This is probably not the best we could do, I agree, but at least nobody can be stuck because a component is not maintained! Sources are available, and you have the right to use them as you wish. BTW, it is exactly the same for the OpenCard framework abstract classes: both APIs and implementation are free. If somebody would find either time and/or money to make it evolve (although it is already pretty useful, stable and reliable), please feel free ! It seems that the smart card industry is not in a state anymore where it can offer to do it for you, but at least the starting base is solid and a lot of work has been put in it already. At one time on this list, some people where wondering if they would need to get the consortium's authorization in order to take OCF and make its sources evolve: be assured that the industry would love you to do so! (except Sun, because they hate when a Java API is not controled by them :-). And also be assured that you have all legal rights to do it. Sorry for not being able to reply to all the help requests because working on OCF is not anymore in my attributions. If the answer is just posting a URL, I always try to do it. I post this message, a bit long sorry, so that everybody can know what the situation is. OCF is still IMHO great for people trying to prototype something with a card, because card standards are pretty difficult to work with. I would love to see the (very small) community of card developers that are using Java take the lead on OCF and the different drivers from all vendors and maintain them for their own needs, but I doubt that there is enough interest. However, I strongly support the idea. BTW, Happy New Year to everybody! ;-) Cheers, Christophe. PS: I have personaly been working on other subjects for more than a year now. They have just been presented at the last Gemplus Developers Conference (see the "session 10" of this page: http://www.gemplus.com/developers/events/gdc2002/tech_sessions.html we are still waiting for the proceedings to be posted though.. :-) = "Money has nothing to do with the results. Money = = kills creativity. You can do it without money, = = you should just think how" --John Cassavettes. = -- ------------------------------------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Gemplus Research Lab Phone: +33 4-42-36-57-83 | Disclaimer: I don't speak for Gemplus Gemplus doesn't speak for me... it is better that way! ------------------------------------------------------------- ---Visit the OpenCard web site at http://www.opencard.org/ for more information on OpenCard---binaries, source code, documents. This list is being archived at http://www.opencard.org/archive/opencard/
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