Joerg Schmitz-Linneweber wrote:
Hi Alon!

I would like to see support for PKCS#11 too but...
(won't elaborate on this now ;-)

I will be glad if you will...
It seems that I am the only one that don't understand gpg motivation.


Regarding the "open-ness" of OpenGPG: Why do you (and Benjamin) think its not open (enough)? The specs are there and you are free to implement "both sides" of the (smart) card. For me the specs allow(ed) it to try implementing OpenGPG on a IBM JavaCard (and it *would* be possible to have a JavaCard implement OpenGPG in parallel to PKCS#11...)

Just my 2cts... Salut, Jörg


This is EXACTLY the problem.
If you have a RSA private key and X.509v3 certificate that refers to the public key, you expect this key to be shared among all applications that you use.

If you had to write an separate applet and provider for each application you make the cost of smartcard integration EXTREMELY high!

On the other hand, if you implement a software API for accessing a generic smartcard, then you don't need to implement any special software in order to use smartcard type A or smartcard type B.

This is all PKCS#11 is about (Or Microsoft CSP in Windows environment...) It provides a generic API to access cryptographic tokens. Most smartcard vendors, including IBM, provide PKCS#11 library that communicates with their card.

PKCS#11 application can benefit from it as well as the user... No proprietary code should be written in order to make your software work with your hardware.

Best Regards,
Alon Bar-Lev.

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