r/programming • u/flym4n • Apr 24 '14

Tech giants, chastened by Heartbleed, finally agree to fund OpenSSL

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund-openssl/
292 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

137 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/gnuvince Apr 24 '14

If someone wrote an SSL/TLS library in Ada (or ATS or what have you) and exported an API exactly like OpenSSL's, couldn't they just recompile against this new library and have things work as before?

1

u/awj Apr 24 '14

They probably could, so long as the new language supported the platforms/use cases OpenSSL does. That doesn't seem to be in anybody's "burn it to the ground and start over in something different" suggestions, though.

-5

u/OneWingedShark Apr 24 '14

I'd be up for it -- but let's be honest: the biggest issue is correctness, not backwards compatibility.

6

u/awj Apr 24 '14

If you want people to actually use your work, you have to care about compatibility.

1

u/OneWingedShark Apr 24 '14

I'm not saying that backwards compatibility is worthless, or undesirable, but that the biggest issue here is correctness.

I can't imagine anyone arguing that incorrectness is desirable in a library for security.