KDE and smartcard support

[George Staikos]

On 22-May-07, at 3:42 AM, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:

>> > So I don't think the QSslSocket should be used in an environment  
>> like
>> > KDE, that have a large user based community who do need to use an
>> > extra feature (other than simplicity).
>>
>> What feature?
>
> The use of hardware based cryptography (Smartcards).
> And even if you provide QSslSocket with hooks to use external private
> key cryptography, I don't see how Qt can be used for kmail (S/MIME),
> kwallet (date encryption), kdm (smartcard authentication).
>
> The reason to use QCA is larger than just solving the TLS/SSL issue.
> Because even if we solve this issue, we will have to use QCA to
> provide the private key operations, use it for encryption and
> smartcard authentication.
>

   I think you are the one who is confused now.  You are welcome to  
use QCA for any of those.  However, SSL policy has been centralized  
in KDE and should be handled through the centralized system.  KIO  
also has built-in SSL protocol support which works, and without any  
additional dependency we can move to using QtSslSocket there, which I  
think is a good thing.  Your smartcard implementation could easily be  
done by providing an abstract interface in kdelibs and then  
implementing it elsewhere.  This is part of what we realized when we  
started writing smartcard code for KDE 7 years ago (and abandoned it  
due to lack of interest and support).

--
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/