> 3.4. Competitive Analysis:
> Moving OpenSSL to /usr/ will also help third-party software autoconf
> scripts to find OpenSSL in Solaris more easily which is what our users
> will definitely benefit from. No more manually adding "--with-ssl-dir"
> options for configure scripts.
Although I support the move of the OpenSSL components out of /usr/sfw,
I think it's important to realize the above benefit is a mixed
blessing. While certainly configure scripts will more easily discover
the presence of OpenSSL in the system, it also makes that resulting
software more susceptible to incompatible changes in the future. A
good example of this occurred with the introduction of
PSARC 2006/019 OpenSSL upgrade to 0.9.8a
which caused numerous already-compiled third-party components to
fail[1] since the previous revision of the library (0.9.7) no longer
existed on the system. As OpenSSL was ARC'ed at a Volatile (nee
External) commitment level, such a change was completely allowed but it
needs to be carefully communicated to the community and other
open-source developers.
dsc
[1]
As an example, roughly 4% of the Companion CD needs to be recompiled in
order to work with the updated OpenSSL.
