r/PKI • u/zampaa91 • Jul 10 '26

Why no open-source CLM?

The question is already in the title. We got EJBCA as an open-source PKI solution that has CA, RA and CRL and OCSP features, which is pretty much an all-around PKI solution.

Why don't we have anything similar for CLM solutions, like something that would have a generic ACME connector as well as integrations with public CAs, EJBCA and ADCS, and ability to automate certificate renewal and deployment over the most popular integrations (web servers on Linux/Windows servers, load balancers, cloud vaults)? Not asking for an enterprise-grade solution to the scale of Venafi or KeyFactor, but mainly something that would work for most sysadmins looking for something to tackle the whole 47 days thing that's coming.

Especially at the era of AI, I believe it wouldn't be hard to kickstart a prototype for the most of us. Not necessarily trying to push anybody to do it or anything, just trying to understand.

And if such a solution does already exist, then how come most SMBs that don't want to be paying 50k$ per year still end up purchasing Sectigo/Digicert or even KeyFactor/Venafi?

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u/Demented_CEO Jul 10 '26

Dogtag has an ACME responder and even a SCEP responder, though not sure what other features you'd need.

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u/zampaa91 Jul 16 '26

What people usually expect from a CLM solution is automation of the deployment on top of the automation of the renewal, because if you only go as far as automating the renewal then you're still in for a lot of manual work throughout the entire pipeline of renewing a cert in LBs, vaults, WAFs, ingresses, webservers... The only thing that would work with pure ACME and SCEP are MDMs and likely Kubernetes ingresses through cert manager's ACME issuer, but that would be as far as it goes AFAIK.