Hi Mate, Thanks for starting this discussion. Not really an expert on the topic, but AFAIK build and distribute on its own will not have any effect, cause right now, `flink-shaded-netty-tcnative-dynamic` [1] is put into the `opt` folder of the Flink build, so until we do not change the assembly that will not change magically.
So if I do not miss anything distributing the static variant as well should not make any changes, but if somebody would like to opt-in, they will have the change. So +1 for the change from my side. Would like to hear other inputs as well though. Best, Ferenc [1] https://github.com/apache/flink/blob/8a1e8f57492b530cfb4f17b1d5ca7678d08b273a/flink-dist/src/main/assemblies/opt.xml#L124 On Saturday, September 13th, 2025 at 16:17, Mate Czagany <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi everyone, > > I'm working on FLINK-38320 [1] to upgrade Pekko, for which I'm also > upgrading Netty to a newer version (4.2.4.Final), and this version of Netty > is compiled against a recent enough version of BoringSSL that's updated to > Apache 2.0 license [2]. As far as I know, the only reason Flink could not > distribute flink-shaded-netty-tcnative-static is that BoringSSL had a > BSD-style license with an advertising clause. Even though Netty packages > still contain the old license of BoringSSL, one of the maintainers has > confirmed that the version they depend on actually has Apache 2.0 license > [3]. > > I guess there's no obstacle anymore to build and distribute > flink-shaded-netty-tcnative-static, which will make users' life easier > already, but I want to hear the community's point of view on also including > it in Flink distribution itself so users don't have to do that manually. > All users would have to do is set `security.ssl.provider=OPENSSL` to get > significant performance improvements compared to the default JDK setting. > Earlier discussions about this were quickly shut down due to the licensing > issues [4], but I think it's worth it to consider it again now. > > This change might cause some additional work needed for users that want to > use dynamically linked version of netty-tcnative as they would probably > need to get rid of the included flink-shaded-netty-tcnative-static library > from the distribution to to fix possible conflicts and ambiguity between > the two libraries. > > Best regards, > Mate > > [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-38320 > [2] > https://github.com/google/boringssl/blob/cccf8525db8a57153d3cb3e22efed2db4b71a8ab/LICENSE > [3] https://github.com/netty/netty/issues/15653 > [4] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-393
