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The loss of this particular business isn't nearly the shame that the loss of the business model is. Activities that required human effort and involvement had a

The loss of this particular business isn't nearly the shame that the loss of the business model is. Activities that required human effort and involvement had a cost, like identity verification, while activities that had near zero costs were free. That was terrific, as you could verify your identity, get a code signing cert, one for the website, and one for s/mime or digital document signing all for $60. I like Let's Encrypt and have used it since, but it's nowhere near as full featured of an offering.

jlgaddis 9y ago
> I like Let's Encrypt and have used it since, but it's nowhere near as full featured of an offering. Yet. I think they'll begin offering a non-free service inthe next two years or so. The free DV certs will remain but eventually they'll need actual income (as opposed to donations and/or corporate sponsorhips). EV certs may be one way that heppens, I don't know. For the longest time, we heard they wouldn't be offering wildcart certificates. Then, I just happened to be looking at their (recently updated) CPS one day (I was working on building out an intenral PKI at the time) and saw mention of issuance of wildcard certificates. They announced those shortly after. Anyways, like I said, st some point they'll need actual income. I'm not sure what they'll offer in order to do that, though. Maybe EV certs, maybe longer issuance periods after more in-depth organizational verification, maybe some subscription-based "manage all your certs easily" tool, who knows. But I expect them to follow the same "automated == free", "manual intervention/work == not free" business model.
- merb 9y ago
  > Anyways, like I said, st some point they'll need actual income. I'm pretty sure they get sponsored by lots of big vendors. i.e. google has letsencrypt support in gcoud. I'm pretty sure that big vendors need to pay to query their API more often.

jlgaddis 9y ago

> I like Let's Encrypt and have used it since, but it's nowhere near as full featured of an offering. Yet. I think they'll begin offering a non-free service inthe next two years or so. The free DV certs will remain but eventually they'll need actual income (as opposed to donations and/or corporate sponsorhips). EV certs may be one way that heppens, I don't know. For the longest time, we heard they wouldn't be offering wildcart certificates. Then, I just happened to be looking at their (recently updated) CPS one day (I was working on building out an intenral PKI at the time) and saw mention of issuance of wildcard certificates. They announced those shortly after. Anyways, like I said, st some point they'll need actual income. I'm not sure what they'll offer in order to do that, though. Maybe EV certs, maybe longer issuance periods after more in-depth organizational verification, maybe some subscription-based "manage all your certs easily" tool, who knows. But I expect them to follow the same "automated == free", "manual intervention/work == not free" business model.

merb 9y ago
> Anyways, like I said, st some point they'll need actual income. I'm pretty sure they get sponsored by lots of big vendors. i.e. google has letsencrypt support in gcoud. I'm pretty sure that big vendors need to pay to query their API more often.