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How about verifying a bad cert?

That's hardly an excuse given the significance of this code.

Right, this is a much stronger case for static analysis and warning-free builds. This change caused dead code. If that code was supposed to be dead, comment it out.

If the code is supposed to be dead, DELETE it. Do not comment it out.

If the code doesn't belong there, get rid of it. If, for whatever reason, you want to show the reader that code used to be there, delete it and leave an explanatory comment. If you're commenting it out because you're not confident in taking it out or you plan to re-enable it in the future, well, that's what you have source control for.

I don't agree. Or I do to a point, but it's a relatively weak point. I agree code should be yanked if there's no reason to be keeping it around. I don't think there's never reason to be keeping it around. Sending people to figure out which version of the repository had the relevant piece of code (which is now correspondingly less likely to have been updated at all when surrounding code changed) doesn't make sense if you genuinely expect it will be relevant again soon.