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Let's Encrypt killed the business model of selling domain-validated certificates for $10 a year. (Much more if you wanted a wildcard!) A company like RapidSSL
by profmonocle 3y ago
Let's Encrypt killed the business model of selling domain-validated certificates for $10 a year. (Much more if you wanted a wildcard!)
A company like RapidSSL or GoDaddy would never have cross-signed Let's Encrypt, unless they offered "buy our whole CA business" money.
But selling DV certs wasn't IdenTrust's business model, so they were happy to provide a cross-signature for (according to some speculation elsewhere in this thread) less than six figures. And because of how TLS root certs work, a cross-sig from IdenTrust was just as useful to LE as a cross-sig from one of the ultra-profitable CA's.