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OpenSSL actually did a breaking API change as recent as 1.1.1e (reverted in 1.1.1f to be fair):

https://bugs.python.org/issue40018

And broke the ABI in 1.0.2g:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1313509

I don't mean to bash on OpenSSL here and agree they generally do an exceptional job at keeping the public interface stable. Just offering some context. These things are difficult.

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To be fair "these things are difficult" if your ABI is terribly designed.

If you've used modern libpng you can thank people like me for the fact you don't need to recompile or even sometimes rewrite code after every micro version release.

Example of something libpng did before we "gently" explained that it's stupid: re-order the public data structures in a "bug fix" release. Because the old order looked untidy see, and so long as every program is recompiled with the new version of the library it won't break...

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