2020-04-16 Minutes of the CA/Browser Forum Teleconference

1. Roll Call: Arno Fiedler (D-TRUST), Ben Wilson (Mozilla), Bruce Morton (Entrust Datacard), Clint Wilson (Apple), Corey Bonnell (SecureTrust), Chris Kemmerer (SSL.com), Daniela Hood (GoDaddy), Dean Coclin (Digicert), Doug Beattie (GlobalSign), Dustin Hollenback (Microsoft), Enrico Entschew (D-TRUST), Inaba Atsushi (GlobalSign), Janet Hines (SecureTrust), Joanna Fox (GoDaddy), Jos Purvis (Cisco Systems), Li-Chun Chen (Chunghwa Telecom), Michael Guenther (SwissSign), Michelle Coon (OATI), Mike Reilly (Microsoft), Neil Dunbar (TrustCor Systems), Niko Carpenter (SecureTrust), Patrick Nohe (GlobalSign), Pedro Fuentes (OISTE Foundation), Peter Miskovic (Disig), Rich Smith (Sectigo), Robin Alden (Sectigo), Ryan Sleevi (Google), Shelley Brewer (Digicert), Stephen Davidson (Quo Vadis), Thanos Vrachnos (SSL.com), Tim Callan (Sectigo), Tim Hollebeek (Digicert), Timo Schmitt (SwissSign), Tobias Josefowitz (Opera Software AS), Trevoli Ponds-White (Amazon), Wayne Thayer (Mozilla), Wendy Brown (US Federal PKI Management Authority), Taconis Lewis (US Federal PKI Management Authority), Andrea Holland (SecureTrust)
2. Anti-Trust statement: read by Robin Alden
3. Review agenda, assign minute taker: Dean will take minutes
4. Approval of prior minutes: Minutes approved
5. Forum Infrastructure subcommittee update: Jos gave the update. The group is in the process of migrating the website mailer. They are also debugging an email issue on the wiki which is preventing people from resetting their passwords. In the meantime, contact Jos if you need yours reset. Ballot SC 26 is in the review period. The group is reviewing our webex capabilities for our June F2F virtual meeting.
6. Code Signing Working Group update: Dean gave the update. The group has received all the assignments from the members and has made edits to the combined BR document. The “parking lot” list of items for the next version has been accumulated and will be worked on in the coming months. The goal is to approve the combined BR document (Baseline and EV) first with minimal changes, followed by an incorporate of the parking lot items.
7. S/MIME WG Charter: Tim gave the update. He is working on updating the recent draft with comments received from Ryan on github and is awaiting for an email from Clint with some additional commentary. If it’s not received by Friday afternoon, he will publish what he has. Ryan said that Google has previously presented several issues to be addressed but it seemed they were being ignored. He asked what the status was on those changes and if Tim planned to publicly engage on some of the concerns raised. Tim said there is a long standing gentlemen’s agreement in the forum that you get approval from endorsers before publicly posting updates to draft ballot language. That process is taking longer than expected. Ryan said that the engagement which he has offered has been ignored. Tim said he addressed the 1 email he received from Ryan and was unaware of others. He stated that he had been actively engaging with Ryan on his github branch a few weeks ago. There was no attempt to ignore Google’s comments. Tim said he would like to get the draft out for more public engagement, than what was being done on github. Ryan agreed that having more public discussion was the best way to get the ballot through. Clint stated he is coming forward with another version of the draft that encapsulated prior conversations and feedback. This should be done later today or tomorrow and will be sent to Tim.
8. Changes to future F2F meeting schedule: Dean advised the group that the next F2F will be a virtual meeting. The meeting will be spread out over a 4-5 day period from 7-10am Pacific time to accommodate the global audience. If anyone has any topics they would like addressed, please email the chair. We have also moved some meetings for 2021. Now, Cisco will host in the Spring. Doug stated that the Fall meeting in Tokyo is being monitored and a decision will be made this summer.
9. Any other business: Dean welcomed Ben Wilson back in the Forum, representing Mozilla. The ballot status was reviewed. Forum -13 had passed.

Forum-12 is looking for another endorser. Ryan stated that Google’s legal team has not yet finished their review and is not prepared to endorse at this time. He summarized the ballot as follows: (1) Clarify ambiguities about members, by defining the different voting member classes: root certificate, issuing certificate, CA and browser categories to help distinguish from Associate members and Interested parties. The intent is to clarify the bylaws so that when it states “members”, does it intend to reflect voting members, or others. “Full” members and “voting” members are the new terms in the ballot. (2) Formalize the notion of what areas can the chair or vice chair change within a document. A discussion took place in Greece as to whether the chair could make minor modifications that did not impact the language but were mostly for formatting. For example, adding the ballot effective date (which may not be known until after the voting period). (3) Voting Representatives: clarifying which representatives from companies are the ones authorized to vote. This would be tracked in our existing membership spreadsheet. Dimitris wanted to start the discussion period for this ballot by end of April.

10. Next call April 30th. Meeting adjourned