[SmartcardServices-Dev] Effort to rebuild smartcard services on Mac from ground up

[Frank Mariën]

Hello Chris,

Chris Inacio schreef op 22/04/15 om 21:2359:
> I can't respond to Dr. Rousseau directly for list subscription 
> reasons, so sorry about screwing up the thread a bit.
>
> I would be impressed if "gpg2 --card-status" didn't just hang.  I 
> understand that GPG has its own card server program and wants 
> exclusive access to the Yubikey.  GPG2 works on RARE occasion and I 
> can't figure out the why's and when's even though I've tried.
>
> But from reading various looks at Apple's current smartcard service, 
> it seems like it doesn't get a lot of love.  I assume that Apple 
> hasn't really dedicated a significant number of engineers to this.  
> And from reading your blog, Dr. Rousseau, it doesn't feel like you 
> believe in Apple's roadmap, at least from the parts that are visible.
>
 From my POV of some years in a SmartCardServices-dependent project (on 
OSX, at least, we support 2 other platforms), I can tell you that Apple 
effectively doesn't care one damn bit. After our years-long attempts at 
getting the slightest bit of information about the largely invisible 
roadmap, we got.. zero response.. Even mentioning the 11 million 
potential users didn't get their attention.. My impression: Apple, being 
a US company, needs to appear "patriotic" and "supporting the troops" 
etc.. so they cannot help but support CAC cards, but otherwise, if you 
have a business model based on anything smart-card related involving 
Apple Inc.. RUN LIKE HELL!

-f
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 11:46 AM, Chris Inacio <nacho319 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:nacho319 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hello all,
>
>     I'm mostly a frustrated smartcard user at this point, but I play
>     the role of developer (or development manager) in my day job.  So
>     I have a combination of Mac OS X 10.10, Centrify (with its
>     smartcard additions), PIV/CAC type smart cards, a Yubikey NEO, and
>     would like it if GnuPG actually worked.
>
>     Mostly, the CAC/PIV type smartcards actually work (I believe
>     really related to the Centrify, but who knows, really…) but the
>     YubiKey + GnuPG just do NOT work reliably (if at all.)
>
>     Strangely, it seems like pcsctest can always find the card readers
>     / devices attached to my machine reliably; but I do occasionally
>     run into random bugs of things that simply don't work.  And many
>     of my colleagues with Mac's often have numerous problems with
>     smartcards operating correctly.  (I personally have 3 smartcards,
>     not including the Yubikey NEO.)  In generally, various colleagues
>     use some combination of: the opensource tokend updates, Centrify,
>     and Thursby PKard.  But all solutions seem to have bugs / issues
>     filed with Apple.
>
>     My question is, to someone who hopefully has thought about this a
>     lot more than I have looked into it:  how many man months would it
>     be to start over?  Take an up-to-date drop of PCSC from open
>     source and do a new cleanroom port to Mac possibly?
>
>     Second question:  would people even want that?
>
>     Regards,
>     Chris Inacio
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> SmartcardServices-Dev mailing list
> SmartcardServices-Dev at lists.macosforge.org
> https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/smartcardservices-dev



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/smartcardservices-dev/attachments/20150422/1c0470ab/attachment.html>