this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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.

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[–] [email protected] 101 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Good idea, giving Microsoft control over every single open source project. I mean, what could go wrong, right?

[–] [email protected] 72 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I'll mirror it on my selfhosted git. Just hit me up when you need the files lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I’ll put it up as a torrent soon

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Even if they don’t I’m sure many others will

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Well, yes. But let's say the OpenSSL developers copy new changes of source code to GitHub, and something goes wrong after the copying (Think of a malicious attacker breaking in and changes some code), then all the people copying from that one download link will be in the same boat as well.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Any official mirrors would sync the changes anyway, it’s automatic

Edit: Oh, I think I misunderstood your point. I agree that hosting the repos themselves would make it harder for randoms to maliciously introduce code

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was trying to say that if the OpenSSL developers upload new source code to only GitHub and something goes wrong, even for example simply a mistake or failure by GitHub, then other users wanting to download will not have to wait for the OpenSSL developers to repair that problem when OpenSSL project would for example have mirrors on Codeberg or sourcehut or their own git server, the latter which they intend to deprecate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If they were to set up an official mirror it would be automatic, so I don’t think there’s any real way to avoid that problem with their current plan. But you’re right! Sorry for the confusion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What is your definition of harder? I think bugs/breaches are even more likely on personal forges than github. Not that one should rely on github anyways...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

I think "something goes wrong" is even MORE likely to happen on randomdude.com's insecure git forge

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Codeberg and SourceHut are not really randomdude.com's insecure git forge. Both are doing development on their own services, and those services are not bad, like at all

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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? 😳

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

This announcement is just downloads which will continue to be available anonymously.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago

What the absolute fuck...

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Aren't they going to shut down their git mirror too, soon?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's a pretty bad idea. I highly recommend this awesome write-up by Software Freedom Conservancy: Give Up GitHub!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (4 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

sorry i get all my software from download.com

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Fuck that... I guess we really should go with LibreSSL after all.

Speaking of, what is its current working state?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

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 😤

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I’ve also seen WolfSSL mentioned, which is HAProxy’s go-to. I haven’t played with it in depth myself though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Federated Forgejo seems ideal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I didn't think they had federation working yet? And forgefed/vervis isn't ready yet either.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Weird and worrying choice

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

better and safer

very ominous considering why most people leave github

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Bad clickbait headline.

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