Password management applet

[Michael LeMay <lemaymd lemaymd com>]

Dear Gnome developers,

   I have not been able to find a simple password management 
application that satisfies my desire for convenience and security.  I'm 
referring to an application that stores miscellaneous passwords, not the 
sort of passwords that gnome-keyring already stores.  I personally 
believe that the password manager belongs in the panel, since password 
management is such a universal task, and since the manager must be 
accessible from anywhere on the desktop at any time, so that it will 
work with all applications that require a password, from an SSH console 
to a web browser to VNC.

   I am currently working on a C panel applet to satisfy these 
requirements that makes use of the OpenSSL cryptographic library and the 
Berkeley DB library.  I decided against storing passwords in 
gnome-keyring because I'd like the password database to be easily 
portable to other machines, desktops, and operating systems.  I intend 
for this application to store all passwords, basically taking the place 
of the GPG-encrypted file some people manually maintain, or the paper 
sticky notes I suppose a few people still use.  I'm actually developing 
a command-line client along with the panel applet to support this usage 
model.

   What I would like to know now is whether other developers believe 
that this applet is important enough to integrate into the Gnome 
project.  I believe this would be beneficial to mainstream users that 
don't have the initiative to move beyond the default collection of Gnome 
panel applets, and who may thus resort to insecure methods of password 
storage.  Otherwise, if this isn't an appropriate addition, I can 
continue to develop it independently and make it available through my 
own channels.  Thank you in advance for your feedback!

-- Michael LeMay


  
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