All your points are fair. To be honest, the PR for the openssl upgrade was in the PR queue for six months, and it was perceived that all the relevant ports that would be affected had been identified and fixed... shows you how good we are are guessing that!
MacPorts waited about a year more than other package managers to upgrade openssl, so we have lots of patches to use from elsewhere, thank goodness. That symlink might stop the rev-upgrade errors, but the symbols in the openssl libraries have changed, so you'll be wandering well into the land of "unpredictable behaviour" there. Best, Ken
