[ANNOUNCE] Pisces 1.0a1 release

[Jeremy Hylton]

I'm pleased to announce the first alpha release of Pisces, a Python
implementation of the SPKI/SDSI Certificate standard.

http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/software/pisces/

This release, 1.0 alpha 1, contains a mostly complete implementation
of the SPKI/SDSI protocols.  It is missing a few features, like
threshold subjects.  I hope to include these in the final 1.0 release.

It also contains:

- spkitool.py, a command-line utility for managing keys, certificates,
and signatures in the style of PGP or GPG,

- pyarrowd.py, a Yarrow-160 random number generator for Linux and
Solaris, 

and

- two demonstration applications, one implementing access controls on
method calls of a Python instance and one implementing a client-server
secure socket protocol in the style of TLS.

I plan to issue a few more alpha and beta releases next month.  Any
comments, suggestions, or questions are welcome.

-- Jeremy Hylton <http://www.python.org/~jeremy/>