Re: Should we settle on one SSL implementation?

["Peter Robinson" <pbrobinson gmail com>]

> I remember this topic being discussed some time ago,
> but software is fluid and maybe it's time to respin
> the topic.
>
> It would seem a worthwhile goal to unify SSL/TLS
> implementations like we did for spell checkers.
> Or, if it turns out to be too hard, at least it would
> be nice to their pki files.
>
> We're now shipping no less than 4 different implementations
> of SSL:
>
>  - openssl (OpenBSD's implementation)
>  - nss (Netscape's implementation)
>  - gnutls (LGPL implementation)
>  - puretls (Java implementation)
>
> But which one should replace the others?
>
> It is not clear to me.  Judging from dependencies, OpenSSL,
> NSS and gnutls all seem equally popular in Fedora.
>
> If we are to believe a non-independent comparison, gnutls
> looks like the best choice:
>
>  http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/comparison.html
>
> I couldn't find good benchmarks around, but they would
> make an important decision factor.
>
> There are two good reasons not to choose OpenSSL: the
> license is GPL incompatible and the ABI gets broken by
> upstream very frequently.  Strangely enough, OpenSSL in
> F8 is linked against nss instead of openssl.
>
> Thoughts?

There's discussions about this on the project wiki here
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraCryptoConsolidation

Not sure what the current status is though.

Peter