What is the p≡p Engine?

The p≡p Engine is a Free Software library encapsulating implementations of:

• Key Management

  Key Management in the p≡p Engine is based on GnuPG key chains (NetPGP on iOS). Keys are stored in an OpenPGP-compatible format, and can be used for different crypto implementations.

• Trust Rating

  The p≡p Engine sports a two phase trust rating system for messages: In phase one a rating is derived based on channel, crypto and key security. This is named "comm_types". In phase two these ratings are mapped to user-representable values mimicking the semantics of a traffic light.

• Abstract Crypto API

  The Abstract Crypto API provides functions to encrypt and decrypt data or full messages, without requiring an application programmer to understand the different applied formats and standards.

• Message Transports

  The p≡p Engine will sport a growing list of message transports, to support any widespread text-based messaging system such as E-Mail, SMS, XMPP and many more.

The p≡p Engine is written in C99 and is expected to run on any platform that conforms to the SUS/POSIX specification. Selected non-SUS platforms are supported as well (such as Microsoft Windows).

How can I use the p≡p Engine?

Build instructions can be found in the "doc/" subfolder in this repository. The p≡p Engine is not meant to be used in application code directly. Instead, the p≡p Engine is meant to be used in conjunction with a so-called "adapter". An adapter provides an API in a programming language that best accomodates developers in their respective software development ecosystem. So, for example, a Java Native Interface adapter exists for development of apps for the Android mobile operating system, or a .NET adapter exists for development of applications on Microsoft Windows. Various adapters are also available at the link provided for the p≡p Engine's code above.

What is the current state of the project?

The p≡p Engine is production-ready. It is under active development by several full-time employees of the p≡p foundation and its partner organizations. The most recent version of the source code can be obtained here: https://cacert.pep.foundation/dev. This is the only offical way to obtain a copy of the source code.

I would like to contribute to the p≡p Engine or a realated project, where do I start?

First of all, excellent! We'd love to dicuss this opportunity further with you. Please contact the upstream developers to get started. See the Contact section.

Legal notes

The p≡p Engine is Copyright 2015-2017 by p≡p foundation, Switzerland. The source code of the p≡p Engine is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3. Accompanying documentation is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) License. Each file includes a notice near its beginning, that indicates the applicable license. If you wish to license the p≡p Engine under different terms, please contact mailto:council@pep.foundation.

Contact

The p≡p foundation and the developers of the p≡p Engine can be reached as detailed here: https://pep.foundation/contact-us/index.html.