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Ballot 149 – Membership Criteria Clarification

Voting on Ballot 149 (Membership criteria clarification) has closed.

The Forum received 17 YES votes from CA members: Buypass, Chungwa Telecom, Disig, Entrust, Globalsign, GoDaddy, HARICA, Logius PKIoverheid, OpenTrust, QuoVadis, SSC, Symantec, Trend Micro, Trustwave, TurkTrust, Visa and WoSign and 3 YES votes from Browser members: Google, Opera and Mozilla.

Three Abstain votes were received from CA members Actalis, ANF, OATI.

There were 0 NO votes.

Therefore the ballot passes.

Kirk Hall of Trend Micro made the following motion and Jody Cloutier of Microsoft, Wayne Thayer of GoDaddy, and Dean Coclin of Symantec endorsed it:

Ballot 149: Revisions to Forum Membership Bylaw 2.1 (July 3, 2015)

2.1 Qualifying for Forum Membership

(a) CA/Browser Forum members shall meet at least one of the following criteria.

(1) Issuing CA: The member organization operates a certification authority that has a current and successful WebTrust for CAs audit, or ETSI 102042 or ETSI 101456 audit report, prepared by a properly-qualified auditor, and that actively issues certificates to Web servers that are openly accessible from the Internet using any one of the mainstream browsers a browser created by a Browser member. **Applicants that are not actively issuing certificates but otherwise meet membership criteria may be granted Associate Member status under Bylaw Sec. 3.1 for a period of time to be designated by the Forum. **

(2) Root CA: The member organization operates a certification authority that has a current and successful WebTrust for CAs audit, or ETSI 102042 or ETSI 101456 audit report, prepared by a properly-qualified auditor, and that actively issues certificates to subordinate CAs that, in turn, actively issue certificates to Web servers that are openly accessible from the Internet using any one of the mainstream browsers a browser created by a Browser member. **Applicants that are not actively issuing certificates but otherwise meet membership criteria may be granted Associate Member status under Bylaw Sec. 3.1 for a period of time to be designated by the Forum. **

(3) Browser: The member organization produces a software product intended for use by the general public for browsing the Web securely.

(b) Applicants should supply the following information:

(1) Confirmation that the applicant satisfies at least one of the membership criteria (and if it satisfies more than one, indication of the single category under which the applicant wishes to apply).

(2) URL of the current qualifying performance audit report.

(3) ( 2) The organization name, as you wish it to appear on the Forum Web site and in official Forum documents.

(4) (3) URL of the applicant’s main Web site.

(5) (4) Names and email addresses of employees who will participate in the Forum mail list.

(6) (5) Emergency contact information for security issues related to certificate trust.

(7) Links or references to issued certificates that demonstrate compliance with all applicable certificate, CRL, and OCSP requirements.

CA Applicants should supply the following additional information

(6) URL of the current qualifying performance audit report.

(7) Links or references to issued certificates that demonstrate compliance with all applicable certificate, CRL, and OCSP requirements.

(c) An Applicant shall become a Member once the Forum has determined by vote consensus among the Members during a teleconference or meeting that the Applicant meets all of the requirements of subsection (a) or, upon the request of any Member, by a Ballot among the Members. A vote of Acceptance by consensus shall be determined or a Ballot of the Members shall be held as soon as the Applicant indicates that it has presented all information required under subsection (b) and has responded to all follow-up questions from the Forum and the Member has complied with the requirements of Section 5.5.

Motion ends

The review period for this ballot shall commence at 18:00 UTC on June 26, 2015, and will close at 18:00 UTC on July 3, 2015. Unless the motion is withdrawn during the review period, the voting period will start immediately thereafter and will close at 18:00 UTC on July 10, 2015. Votes must be cast by posting an on-list reply to this thread.

A vote in favor of the motion must indicate a clear ‘yes’ in the response. A vote against must indicate a clear ‘no’ in the response. A vote to abstain must indicate a clear ‘abstain’ in the response. Unclear responses will not be counted. The latest vote received from any representative of a voting member before the close of the voting period will be counted. Voting members are listed here:

In order for the motion to be adopted, two thirds or more of the votes cast by members in the CA category and greater than 50% of the votes cast by members in the browser category must be in favor. Also, at least seven members must participate in the ballot, either by voting in favor, voting against, or abstaining.

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The Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum) is a voluntary gathering of Certificate Issuers and suppliers of Internet browser software and other applications that use certificates (Certificate Consumers).