Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 14:23:39 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: "Jacques A. Vidrine" <nectar@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Mikhail Teterin <mi+mx@aldan.algebra.com>, Alexandr Kovalenko <never@nevermind.kiev.ua>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OpenSSL vs. -lmd Message-ID: <3D49A6DB.6FFE5535@mindspring.com> References: <200207311641.g6VGfRWj099655@freefall.freebsd.org> <20020801143059.GA536@nevermind.kiev.ua> <200208011151.55478.mi%2Bmx@aldan.algebra.com> <3D498FB4.6987B696@mindspring.com> <20020801195640.GQ26797@madman.nectar.cc> <3D4998F9.A736EA85@mindspring.com> <20020801203601.GA27367@madman.nectar.cc> <3D49A115.22FF6948@mindspring.com> <20020801210648.GA27628@madman.nectar.cc>
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"Jacques A. Vidrine" wrote: > > By including OpenSSL in the base system, you damage the > > portability of *my* code, if I use FreeBSD as a developement > > platform. > > How does this damage the portability of *Terry Lambert*'s code? By locking me into the FreeBSD-RELEASE version of OpenSSL, unless I use the OpenSSL supplied source as a component on a vendor branch of my own software source repository, and then expend a lot of extra effort to avoid accidently getting bits from the system version of SSL, instead of the one from my own source tree. You look at FreeBSD including OpenSSL as a feature; I look at it as a liability. > > There are also the programs and the header files that OpenSSL > > would prefer to install into the directories /usr/local/bin > > and /usr/local/include/openssl, by default, which get installed > > wherever on FreeBSD. > > They get installed wherever on any system. You'll find them in > /usr/lib on Debian. You'll find them in /opt/lib on some System Vish > systems. You'll find them in /usr/local/ssl/lib on systems that take > the OpenSSL defaults. You'll find them in /usr/local/lib if put there > by FreeBSD ports or by system administrators who like them there. > You'll find them in /usr/pkg/lib, /home/luser/openssl/lib, > /afs/some-university/OpenSourcePackages/cryptography/OPENSSL/0.9.6e/lib, > or wherever the damn administrator wants them. > > If you have a point, make it. Otherwise let's drop this thread. I'll > help by not responding to any further content-free messages (and not > generating any more). If there has to be a single point, it's that *NOT* having an SSL implementation selected for you by your OS vendor is as important as anything else, if you are merely using the OS as an applications platform. This is particularly true if you really don't care about which applications platform you use, and just want your code to compile and work without changes on as many UNIX systems as possible, to avoid being tied to a particular vendor. I realize that most people have an inherent defensive bias in this case, because they don't like to see FreeBSD as being a replaceable commodity. But one of the major Linux distributions just closed down a lot of their U.S. operations, so it seems that tying your product to a particular platform vendor, rather than "generic UNIX", is just asking for trouble. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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