Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 02:17:04 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za> Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OpenSSL vs. -lmd Message-ID: <3D50E590.66BCE6B6@mindspring.com> References: <3D4A43DB.5DE70508@mindspring.com> <200208070736.g777a11p003654@grimreaper.grondar.org>
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Mark Murray wrote: > Perl was removed from the base system because > > 1) It was hard to maintain in the base I would argue that this is the result of being actively maintained by a third party. > 2) It was very big and getting much bigger very fast. I would argue that there is specifically a "miniperl" that provides base functionality to address this issue, without having to rip perl out. Note that I personally didn't want perl in the base system in the first place, and was quite outspoken against it. Even so, your #2 here is a strawman. > Perl's severability was non-trivial - the kernel depended on it, > and some pretty hairy programs were rewritten in C and AWK to enable > its removal. Again, there are similarities to OpenSSL. Trying to use SSH without OpenSSL would be rather difficult, and now that every other external access mechanism that doesn't involve a human sitting at the console has been turned off by default, I think that the imact in terms of things which would need to be changed is at least comparable. > We are still not finised with the Perl Script Rewrite. I am aware of this. I won't get into the Philosophy Of Indifference, or how it applies to Open Source, except to say that if adding a new stop sign in an unpopulated area is an unpopular decision, it could be difficult to find a sign painter. > OpenSSL is very easy to maintain in the base tree - its API is > stable (sure, its being added to), and it can be removed from the > world build trivially. Not without a comparable loss of functionality, starting with having no non-console access available by default. I'd also argue that the base system version would be 0.9.6e right now, of maintenance was as trivial as you imply that it is. None of this argues *against* either being a severable package as opposed to a chunk in a monolithic base system inage tarball, in any case, and the current version lag vs. the maintainers released versions are indicative of the problem I'm trying to highlight. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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