The OpenCA project has been started when PKI's scenario was lacking either on the applications side and on the certificates' management one. We thought that certification technology, although at hand because of the increasing computational computer power and ever decreasing costs, was suffering by lack of open sourced software easing development of digital certificates' related applications and deployment of users acquaintance with digital certificates. The OpenCA Project was, and still it is, a :
The project development has been divided in two main tasks: studying and refining the security scheme that guarantees the best model to be used in a CA and developing software to easily setup and manage the Certification Authority.
One part of the project was the development of a full PKI Open-Sourced software. The software is actually ever growing as new protocols and standards are being issued by the standardization bodies. The users' and developers' community has been enlarging and we can now count on many individuals and organizations directly or indirectly supporting the project.
Although the software development is one important aspect of OpenCA, our objectives were not only technological. We can say that among the project's objectives there were also the exchange of ideas between different realities and the setting up of a working group deploying code and solutions solving practical certification issues.