OpenSSL Corporation BAC/TAC Panel at OpenSSL Conference — help shape the topics

Before asking topical questions, maybe first a clarifying one to properly adjust concrete questions: Is this about all BAC/TACs or just those of OpenSSL Corporation?

@Michael Baentsch Please note that OpenSSL Foundation merged its BAC and TAC to a single Advisory Committee. So there is no longer a BAC and TAC in Foundation. So hopefully there will be less confusion in future when BAC and TAC is mentioned. Furthermore if you open the link, the talk topic speaks about the Corporation BAC and TAC.

And yes, the Foundation Advisory Committee has a panel discussion at the conference as well: https://openssl2026.sched.com/event/2VSnQ/openssl-foundation-advisory-committee

Ahh -- the link indeed answers the question. Thanks for the clarification @Tomas Mraz ! The "unification" of Foundation BAC/TACs I was well aware of and found a good idea. Hence I also voted there for the next rep. @Chris Ward : It may be good to re-title this topic to "OpenSSL Corporation BAC/TAC Panel" to set expectations then for "casual readers" (I obviously have to admit being).

Updated, clarified this is about the Corporation TAC/BAC panel at the conference.

My topic: the "openssl" app. Is it a demo of how to use the API? Is it an in-tree tool for testing the code? Is it supposed to be a basis for other tools to be built upon? What's it relationship to "demos" directory There are business and technical discussions here. The code within is not always up to date, often does not show best API calling practices, and there are still some places where the programmatic interface to some things involves shoving an openssl.cnf fragment in.

(I have views about how this should/could evolve: I think that splitting should be considered)

@mcr, I've been musing over starting over with a new app, called ossl or ossl-tool. Especially in this day and age, where many CLI apps have evolved to a sub-command tree rather than having some options / flags having command semantics while others have actual option semantics.

Thanks for the question; i've promoted it, seems like a good one.

To give you a sense of the tone, here are a few we're already on the hot list to ask:

• Is our community intimidating to new contributors, especially outside engineering?

• Are BAC and TAC meetings effective, or do the feedback channels feel too indirect?

• Should a community poll be able to overrule the TAC, as happened with FIPS_mode()?

• A year on, is "breaking compatibility is good, pain is good" still true?

• Does the Board now bring questions to its advisory committees, or does input still flow one way?

Post your questions here here too. If you'd rather not post publicly, message me directly.

CONFIRMED: On the panel: Randall Becker (Nexbridge), Dmitry Belyavskiy (Red Hat), Nikolas Gauder (TU Munich), Jeff Johnson (Cisco), Aditya Koranga (PQStation), Simo Sorce (Red Hat), Paul Yang (Lenovo), Jaroslav Řezník (Red Hat), moderated by me.

@Chris WardThe community is too hard for existing contributors. What tool am I using now? Something hosted/supported by Loomio I think? I don't really feel like this platform is helping. As much as I would never want to model anything on  Scientology, the notion of having multiple levels of acolyte, with a progression could be helpful in identifying what are real pain points, and what are the result of simple inexperience, lack of technical understranding.