The dispute in PR https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/7853 has made it quote obvious that we have some very different ideas on when and why we should or shouldn't deprecate stuff.
What does deprecation mean? Essentially, it's a warning that at some point in the future, the deprecated functionality will be removed. I believe that part of the issue surrounding this is uncertainty about when that removal will happen, so let me just remind you what's written in our release strategy document: * No existing public interface can be removed until its replacement has been in place in an LTS stable release. The original interface must also have been documented as deprecated for at least 5 years. A public interface is any function, structure or macro declared in a public header file. Ref: https://www.openssl.org/policies/releasestrat.html I'd like to get this thread started with the following four questions, for as many of us to answer as possible: 1. Why should we deprecate stuff 2. Why should we not deprecate stuff 3. When should we deprecate stuff 4. When should we not deprecate stuff Cheers, Richard -- Richard Levitte levi...@openssl.org OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org/~levitte/