When I started this blog back in 2010, I wanted HTTPS, but I didn’t want to pay extra for it. Back then that wasn’t as easy as it is today. So I compromised and got my TLS certificates from CAcert. Problem was that almost no OS or browser vendor trusted their certs. Debian and Ubuntu did make it part of their ca-certificates package, which worked fine for myself, but very few other people.
Anyway, according to the changelog, Debian has removed CAcert back in 2014 after lots of discussion. Looks like Ubuntu followed immediately, because they have a very similar changelog entry. And I only realized today, over 7 years later. The CAcert website and wiki also look pretty stale by now.
The other problem was that requesting certs from CAcert was a manual task. They had a nice web interface, and they would send email reminders before your cert expired. According to my mail archive, my last CAcert certificate had expired back in 2018. And I just never bothered to request a new one.
Of course, a lot has changed since those ancient times. Let’s Encrypt has done a very good job filling CAcert’s niche. Ever since I revived this blog a couple of months ago, I’ve been using their certs. But that’s another story…
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