Hi mod_ssl users,
As most of you probably know, the development efforts of Apache 2 are
going to result in a product, soon. The current betas are already
stable, mature, fast, portable than ever, strong, and support many
features that we have dreamed about for years, like filtering (I
mention this feature, and not zillion others, because it is important
specifically for SSL).
Yes, it's true that some of us didn't like various things, and that the
development process was not optimal and took too much time.
But this effort comes (finally...) to a successful end, and I believe
that everybody who uses SSL (including myself...) should do the
migration.
Contrary to past versions, this one is a dramatic change in the
integration of SSL. No more patches, no more re-compilations with
"-DEAPI", no more 3rd party modules which cause Apache to crash because
these modules were not compiled using this flag, no more specific
versions of mod_ssl per each version of Apache, no more repeating
merges of the patches of mod_ssl.
Now, thanks to the filtering feature, mod_ssl is separate, and doesn't
depend on modifications in the core of Apache.
Thanks to the White House, mod_ssl is not a national secret that can't
be distributed, anymore.
Thanks to the USPTO, mod_ssl doesn't depend on a protected patent
anymore (it expired. RSA even gave up 2 weeks).
And thanks to ASF, mod_ssl is a standard part of Apache.
Any Apache that will be distributed in the future, will include SSL
support (at least optionally), that can be enabled externally by
installing OpenSSL and adding some directives to the httpd.conf.
Ben did a great job by creating apache_ssl.
Ralf did a great job too, by improving it, and his impressive efforts
and skills that were invested in developing and maintaining mod_ssl.
We all owe a great thank to Ralf for other Open Source projects that he
does, or joins.
Now it's time to make the next step, and migrate to Apache 2.0.
It still requires some work and testing.
It can happen if we all join this effort.
I am not a member of ASF, but I'm convinced that everybody will accept
you happily.
--
Eli Marmor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
CTO, Founder
Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd.
__
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Fax.: +972-9-766-1314 P.O.B. 7004
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