OpenSSL Communities

Priorities for the next 12 months

Paul DalePaul Dale Tue 30 Sep 2025 1:47AMPublicSeen by 26

As part of the BAC/TAC/staff meetings later this week, there has been a request for my/our top five priorities for the next year. The ask is for a one line per item + a short "why now" elucidation.

Please let me know what you want so I can present the committers' input to those present. Even if you are unsure, say something. Any discussion or input is far better than none.

Neil Horman

Neil HormanTue 30 Sep 2025 8:56AM

My thoughts alone, targeting the 4.0 development to take place over the next 12 months:

  1. ENGINE removal (https://github.com/openssl/project/issues/1318)

  2. selected deprecated function removal

  3. discontinuation of atexit() use in OpenSSL (https://github.com/openssl/project/issues/271)

  4. sslv3 removal (https://github.com/openssl/project/issues/1319)

  5. zero global mutable data (https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/23451)

Tomas Mraz

Tomas MrazWed 1 Oct 2025 7:47AM

@Neil Horman I mostly support your set of priorities. I have concern about 5 (zero global mutable data) though. IMO it is not achievable in time of the 4.0 release and as it will inevitably cause subtle API/ABI breakage it won't be suitable for 4.1.

Kurt Roeckx

Kurt RoeckxTue 30 Sep 2025 4:10PM

If 4.0 it's going to take a year, will we have an other release in between?

Tim Hudson

Tim HudsonTue 30 Sep 2025 4:17PM

@Kurt Roeckx 4.0 is April 2026 release - as per all releases now being on six months timelines.

Paul Dale

Paul DaleWed 1 Oct 2025 12:26AM

Anyone have a clue as to what happened to the text I wrote to explain this?
It has disappeared for me.

Frederik Wedel-Heinen

Frederik Wedel-HeinenWed 1 Oct 2025 3:59AM

From the history it looks like you deleted it yesterday at 11:33 :)

Paul Dale

Paul DaleWed 1 Oct 2025 8:10AM

I edited it and it came up blank so I went back and edited again and got the text. I guess the blank must have stuck. It's not the first time I've gone to edit something here and been presented a blank comment.

Tomas Mraz

Tomas MrazWed 1 Oct 2025 7:44AM

@Paul Dale I re-added it as I had the text in my mailbox.

Paul Dale

Paul DaleWed 1 Oct 2025 10:50PM

Thanks.

Frederik Wedel-Heinen

Frederik Wedel-HeinenWed 1 Oct 2025 4:01AM

My priority is focused on DTLS 1.3. We need it for pqc encrypted voice and video calls and to be able to use providers.

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