The OpenSSL blog shares updates, insights, and news from the team behind the world’s most widely used cryptographic library.
Over the last 10 years, OpenSSL has published advisories on over 100 vulnerabilities. Many more were likely silently fixed in the early days, but in the past year our goal has been to establish a clear public record.
The OpenSSL license is rather unique and idiosyncratic. It reflects views from when its predecessor, SSLeay, started twenty years ago. As a further complication, the original authors were hired by RSA in 1998, and the code forked into two versions: OpenSSL and RSA BSAFE SSL-C. (See Wikipedia for discussion.) I don’t want get into any specific details, and I certainly don’t know them all.
Things have evolved since then, and open source is an important part of the landscape – the Internet could not exist without it. There are good reasons why Microsoft is a founding member of the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII).
Our plan is to update the license to the Apache License version 2.0. We are in consultation with various corporate partners, the CII, and the legal experts at the Software Freedom Law Center. In other words, we have a great deal of expertise and interest at our fingertips.
We believe everyone should have access to security and privacy tools, whoever they are, wherever they are or whatever their personal beliefs are, as a fundamental human right.
Companies that have contributed to OpenSSL Library
