Hi, A few weeks ago, a round of much appreciated constructive criticism was started. Although the mailing list has been quiet since then, there have been efforts to address the issues. At this point, Martin and I would like to briefly present some of our work and open the floor to further discussion.
One of the main focuses is usability. While installing and running a PKI will probably always remain a complex task, we feel that there is plenty of room for improvements that will make it easier for the PKI administrator. Our goal is to be able to install generic OpenXPKI packages, apply site-specific policies and configuration information, ending up with a system that is easier to install and maintain. To provide examples for a few common situations, Martin has added a "Best Practices" page to the Wiki (http://wiki.openxpki.org/index.php/Best_Practices). These should be the pieces of the puzzle that the system administrator needs after installing the pristine OpenXPKI packages. They also contain work-arounds for known "problems" or one-off configuration. The Debian installation has been upgraded to support Lenny and provides a pristine installation. While the resulting installation doesn't enforce any policies that should be used in a production environment, it can be used for evaluating OpenXPKI as well as a basis for tests and development. As a contrast, I had made a futile attempt at installing OpenXPKI when I first started with the project. I gave up after a week and instead started work on upgrading the previous Debian packages to Lenny. Now, I can have a fresh test installation up and running in about an hour or two in a virtual machine (e.g. VMWare), including the installation of Debian. For more details, please see the Wiki (http://wiki.openxpki.org/index.php/Debian_Lenny_installation). I also added examples on how to configure LDAP (http://wiki.openxpki.org/index.php/LDAP_Integration) and Request Tracker (http://wiki.openxpki.org/index.php/RT_Integration) with the Debian installation. The efforts towards (re)establishing "developer guidelines" where presented in my mail to the list on April 7th, so I will only reiterate that they, too, are only a template. Martin and I, for example, have been discussing coding style, which I will briefly present in a separate mail. To close, I would like to emphasize that the above items are obviously incomplete. They are intended as a starting point for further discussions and efforts. Documenting those efforts in the Wiki will make it easier to those that join the project. As Martin and I have been very busy with our current project, some of the discussion points raised recently are still dangling and should be addressed. We may create a "Visions" section to keep track of some of these, as well as provide more information on where our focus is. Cheers, Scott
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