The Belgian Federal ICT advisory body Fedict published on OSOR three open source software projects related to the country's electronic identity card. The tools are intended to increase usage of this e-ID card, but also to allow other developers to write applications for it.
Fedict posted its announcements on the projects on OSOR, the European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository, last week. The software code is available on Google Code, the open source software development website offered by the Internet search firm.
The first project announced, e-ID Applet, allows the e-ID card to be used from a web-browser, which Fedict hopes to be the most user-friendly, as it requires no manual installation.
It runs on the open source operating system Linux, as well as on Apple's and Microsoft's proprietary operating systems. It supports a range of web browsers including the open source browser Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari.
The second project that was announced, e-ID Middleware, allows e-ID card users to sign documents and emails. Similar to e-ID Applet, it can be used with both open source and proprietary office productivity tools and email applications.
The third project, jTrust, is a Java library useful for validating e-ID card solutions. In its introduction, Fedict writes it is meant as an alternative for the Java Certification Path application programming interface. "Instead of implementing the entire specification, a more pragmatic approach was taken."
All three projects are published using the GNU Lesser General Public License (L-GPL).
More information:
General information on Belgium's e-ID (in Dutch and French)