1y ago

OpenSSL goes GitHub only

Releases Distribution Changes - OpenSSL Blog

We’re no longer using our old ftp, rsync, and git links for distributing OpenSSL. These were great in their day, but it’s time to move on to something better and safer. ftp://ftp.openssl.org and rsync://rsync.openssl.org are not available anymore. As of June 1, 2024, we’re also going to shut down https://ftp.openssl.org and git://git.openssl.org/openssl.git mirrors.
GitHub is becoming the main distributor of the OpenSSL releases.

53 comments

Good idea, giving Microsoft control over every single open source project. I mean, what could go wrong, right?
- Yes, what would possibly go wrong ? And OpenSSL is only a small and unimportant project and hardly anyone depends on it, right ? Right ? I can dig that they want to get rid of some of their own services but completely giving up on their own git repository ? Let's hope they do mirror the source code on Codeberg or sourcehut.
  
  I'll mirror it on my selfhosted git. Just hit me up when you need the files lol
  
  Even if they don’t I’m sure many others will
- Read-only github mirror with read/write on a personal forge seems like one possible approach to make it more accessible/friendly without giving up any control to MS.
These were great in their day, but it’s time to move on to something better and safer.
How is it "safer" when contributing to the codebase or filing and discussing issues will now require creating an account and giving up personal information to one of the most privacy-invasive tech companies in the world? 😳
- Agreed!
- You are mistaking contributing and distributing.
  Edit to clarify: The blog is strictly speaking about the means of distributing the release tarball. Distributing the release tarball has nothing to do with how contribution is accepted or how issue is handled. What they say on the blog is also very clear IMHO and for a good reason. Maintaining infrastructure takes work. Works that if you didn't do it right can be an attack vector. Do you guys remember xz? Do you read how the vulnerabilities came to be? Maintaining a single source of truth for the release tarball can help mitigate that. If one malicious actor can control even one of the distribution channels of the release tarball we get xz 2 electric boogaloo.
- This announcement is just downloads which will continue to be available anonymously.
What the absolute fuck...
I think a lot of people here read the headine and think OpenSSL is moving everything to github and giving up everything else. It is not. They only moved the means of distributing the release tarball to github and stopped supporting the ftp and rsync. Do not confuse distribution and contribution/development.
- Aren't they going to shut down their git mirror too, soon?
  
  Well, I've took it to read it for myself on how they receive contribution, and it always need to be from github anyway unlike say Linux which accept email patches.
https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/
Considering the absolutely devastating performance hits 3.x brings (and the apparent design failures that make it extremely difficult if not impossible to reclaim it) I wonder if openssl's days are numbered. WolfSSL seems to be favorable to the HAProxy team. Hopefully that can get some traction.
- Good that you mention WolfSSL and that HAProxy team seems to like it. Years ago some Linux distributions made the switch to LibreSSL, but unfortunately that all (?) seems to have failed.
- OpenWRT was also using WolfSSL until October last year: https://openwrt.org/releases/23.05/notes-23.05.0#switch_from_wolfssl_to_mbedtls_as_default
That's a pretty bad idea. I highly recommend this awesome write-up by Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub!
- Those are fairly weak arguments honestly, none which have anything to do with the features on GitHub itself. In fact, this could have been written by someone who has no development or project management knowledge
  Open source projects also don't pay for GitHub.
  Here's one counterargument. One of our projects failed because we wasted so much time arguing about the hosting that we didn't get much done. We moved between a few different services and wasted time comparing shortcomings between them.
  In practice, migration from GitHub is actually super easy if you ever wanted to because they literally have an API for everything. It also is a really comprehensive service, and a lot of the open source ones are missing things
  Im not a fan of Microsoft, but GitHub works really well and you can rely on it to be fully reliable (there have been few outages)
  
  but GitHub works really well and you can rely on it to be fully reliable
  So does GitLab, Codeberg, sourcehut or self-hosting your own instance of GitLab CE, Gogs, Gitea or Forgejo. Why use GitHub? Especially, when developing open source software? Why use a proprietary software forge run by a Big Tech corporation that uses your code to train some AI model?
sorry i get all my software from download.com
Fuck that... I guess we really should go with LibreSSL after all.
Speaking of, what is its current working state?
- I'll take anything that has a compatible command line and library to be honest
  Except ffmpeg/libav. I will always want the real ffmpeg 😤
- I’ve also seen WolfSSL mentioned, which is HAProxy’s go-to. I haven’t played with it in depth myself though.
Federated Forgejo seems ideal.
- I didn't think they had federation working yet? And forgefed/vervis isn't ready yet either.
Weird and worrying choice
I doubt many of the commentators here used any of the deprecated methods to contribute to openssl.
It's one thing to talk about what's good for open source, it's quite another to practice it.
- I doubt many commenters here have used a wheelchair ramp to access a public building. Guess we should just remove all those ramps since that accessibility doesn’t affect them. The barrier to entry for setting up a wheel chair ramp is more expensive than offering at least one non-corporate code contribution method.
  
  Your analogy would fit if the deprecated methods didn't have a higher barrier to entry than using GitHub.
  This is less like removing the wheelchair ramps and more like removing the steps at the back of the building.
ominous
- better and safer
  very ominous considering why most people leave github
Bad clickbait headline.

53 comments