this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I'm looking for software which I can host myself, own website. The purpose of the software is to let clients sign contracts online digitally.

What would be the easiest way to do this? And perhaps any suggestions?

Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nextcloud has some addons for that. But these digital signatures are not legally valid in some jurisdictions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you. Will have a look.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anything you use will need to generate secure certs for each user that signs which will need to be tied back to a root CA that is trusted by the clients device they are reading the signed documents on. Are you open to hosting all of the needed pieces to keep that working including buying the needed certs to chain trust?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WOW! lol...sounds complicated...will it be expensive?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly I don’t really know. I don’t think it has to be but you’ll need to research what kind of certs you’ll need for your purposes and what options exists for a CA.

My overall point was more that this isn’t really a “just setup Apache” web service, it’s a fair bit more involved since your looking for (I’m assuming) legally valid digital signatures which means they need to be secure, unique, identifiable, and adhere to non-repudiation. Services like DocuSign do all of that work already so unless you truly want open source because of passion or principles, this isn’t really a great area to try and roll your own without some experience and expertise.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Thank you, it makes sense what you saying. Might not be the cost and effort worth in the end.