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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

One of the big things they did was cut out enormous amounts of legacy code. Code that someone somewhere might be using. Since they were basically just making LibreSSL for themselves they didn't have to care about that and could be much more free with the changes.

The OpenSSL developers would have a much tougher time dropping MSDOS and VMS and OS/360 support because there are still a couple of people who need it.

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They didn't make it 'just' for themselves - it supports Windows, Linux and and Mac OS X on various (modern) architecture also.

I think at some point, if you've got a legacy application running on such an old platform, the cost of maintaining your own fork of libraries like OpenSSL has to fall on you eventually.

Although OpenSSL themselves continuing to maintain these ancient ports is admirable in a way, the unmaintainability it has caused to the code base as a whole is a serious problem that has reduced security for everyone.

Having spent years working with openssl code, there's nothing you can do to save it but take a rusty axe to it.

Every horrifying thing in there is justifiable because "someone might be using it". Not enough reason to risk the security of every net-connected Unix over.

How about big-endian x86, in case anyone makes a processor that operates that way? At least OpenSSL is ready!

I think that has more to do with code hygiene.

Problems are easier to spot when there are less underlying assumptions.

Translation: The needs of the few (old corporations) should outweigh the needs of the many (rest of the world).

When you make your money doing consulting work, the yes, the needs of the payee do get a certain priority.

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