Public Certificates

CACert.org is a public Certificate Authority (CA). For non-admin types, this is a self-proclaimed issuer of free SSL certificates.

Is it worth anything? Like a lot of other things on the Internet, the answer is "it depends". It depends on how well people trust the site and use it. Note: You don't have to use Verisign, you can issue your own certificates. Verisign's strength is that, by way of government sponsorship, the majority of users "trust" it as a CA.

Update: For those that are interested in rolling your own, check out the "OpenSSL Certificate Cookbook".