The Let’s Encrypt project aims to provide free SSL – TLS certificates and has just announced that pre‑orders will open in July. The first free certificates will be distributed from September 2015.
The Let’s Encrypt project is supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Mozilla Foundation, the Linux Foundation, Akamai, IdenTrust, Automattic, and Cisco. The goal of the project, as mentioned earlier, is to provide free SSL and TLS certificates to any webmaster who wishes to implement HTTPS on their products.
The process of submitting applications for issuing an SSL certificate is quite complicated for most developers, as is the installation process. These problems, as well as the high cost of certificates, cause webmasters to avoid using encrypted connections.
The goal of the project is to simplify the process while simultaneously reducing costs.
“We will issue the first certificates under our root, and under strictly controlled conditions. There will be no cross-signature yet, so the certificates will not be validated if our root is not installed in the client software,” the official announcement states
Applications for the certificates will open from July 27 and the Let’s Encrypt project aims to increase their availability until the final start date of September 14, 2015.
