Remembering the first time

Remember the first time you successfully generated a free LE certificate? Man, what a rush. It was even more satisfying if you had been stumbling with some issue or another before everything finally clicked. Then, you get another bump when you realize you can now encrypt-all-the-things
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It’s so empowering to not only be free from the oppression of for-profit CAs, but to have automated the whole process as well.

I’ve been an LE user and advocate for a long time now. When ACMEv2 and wildcard support came around, I even decided to try building an OSS client which was a terrifying, yet awesome experience. Learning the ins and outs of the crypto behind everything, while frustrating at first, has truly been one of the highlights of my career so far. What’s crazy is that people actually use it other than me. Obviously, that’s the point of making it open source. But it still sort of boggles my mind.

In any case, thanks to everyone who make this whole thing possible. LE devs and leadership. Community members who tirelessly answer all the newbie questions. Client devs who fill in the gaps and make LE more accessible to everyone. And everyone else who advocates for a more secure Internet.

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There’s not really much to add to this; I also want to thank the ACME working group at IETF, which continuously improves the ACME protocol so that we will hopefully soon have an officially published ACME protocol, and there will hopefully be more CAs using ACME!

The whole ACME/Let’s Encrypt universe is just awesome and deserves constant praise! :slight_smile:

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Thank YOU for being great members of the Let’s Encrypt community and supporting Let’s Encrypt throughout the years (and for years to come!). Let’s Encrypt truly wouldn’t be what it is without that support and the creation of open source tools. You all make the Web better, every day! :slight_smile:

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Agree whole heartedly, love the image and will upload the image to spread the team’s good work. Hope it is not copyrighted :slight_smile:

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Indeed I remember it clearly as it was around the time I was planning to automate the deployment of paid DV SSL certificates for my Centmin Mod LEMP stack's automated Nginx HTTP/2 HTTPS site generator. Letsencrypt came and changed my plans for the better.

I started with official python based letsencrypt client when it launched but it was too heavy memory wise for <512MB VPS CentOS systems, so eventually had to rewrite my Nginx HTTP/S HTTPS automated Letsencrypt deployment using @Neilpang acme.sh bash client which suited lower memory VPS systems. So now all my Centmin Mod LEMP stack users can create Nginx HTTP/2 HTTPS based sites with free Letsencrypt SSL certificates ! Through Centmin Mod, I am doing my bit to contribute to wider usage of Letsencrypt thanks to @Neilpang acme.sh and Letsencrypt. Thanks :sunglasses:

I am sure there's many other folks to thank too on this community @schoen @rugk @Osiris @josh @pfg @jsha @bmw

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Thanks @rmbolger, @felixf, @John_Betong, and @eva2000! I love working on Let’s Encrypt, and part of what makes me so happy about it is hearing the great success stories from people who have encrypted their sites (and then encrypted more sites, and then helped more people encrypt their own sites; nice!).

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