pkcs11 supported or not ?

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 23:23:13 +0200, bk  said:

> My point is to have the aegypten system use a pkcs#11 provider, not become one 
> itself.

I see.  However, we have no need for it because we access smartcards
using OpenSC for pkcs#15 cards and native code for other smartcard
applications.

Why should we use that clumsy PKCS#11 if we have a much more elegant
way to access cards.  The PKCS#11 standard is only useful to bring
proprietary applications together - with Free Software we have far
easier means to do that.

Smartcards should be compatible to ISO 7816 which describes the
interface of the card. The actual application is of course not
specified and pkcs#11 won't help here either.

The Aegypten software already supports PKCS#15 identity cards as used
in Finland, Estonian and some German administration offices.  I also
stated to implement the DINSIG cards which are supposed to be used by
the German signature law but meanwhile put this on halt in favor of
the OpenPGP card.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


-- 
Werner Koch                                      <wk@gnupg.org>
The GnuPG Experts                                http://g10code.com
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 http://fsfeurope.org