In these projects rather than try to solve some particular problem or group of problems and use standards on the path to that solution, the project just throws together whatever happened to attract somebody's interest in a standard into a big heap of cool toys without rhyme or reason.

I think we actually could have blindly got lucky with Heartbleed, it could easily have been the case that to make this extension work you needed to add 40 lines of custom code to every program even though it would always be identical boilerplate code. After all it took them years to add a sane API for "Just check the bloody hostname in the certificate matches". But, that isn't how it worked out.

If you compare Python's "batteries included" philosophy, OpenSSL and a few other libraries take something closer to: "I just keep everything in this old cardboard box, try looking in there?". And sure enough there are batteries, although they seem to be covered in a sweet-smelling sticky substance, there is also a broken Gamecube, one cufflink with a brand logo you don't recognise, a chocolate bar dated 1986, a PS/2 to USB adaptor, a C60 cassette, two dried-out PostIt notes, one sock, a 40cm USB cable with a mini-B connector, and the spare fuses from a 2005 Ford Focus...