Andy,

On 04 May 2011, at 18:01, Andy Burnett wrote:

> Out of curiosity, what will it take to get SSL working?  Is it a difficult
> technical problem, or is it just a question of time/money? 

You are not the first to ask for this.

This is really a recurring theme: why isn't HTTPS working ?

I think it is doable, but it is certainly not trivial. It requires both a good 
understanding of the Smalltalk level (Socket, SocketStream, SSL concepts, 
streams/networking) as well as an understanding of the VM Plugin level (C 
code). Furthermore, there are 3 versions of the plugin (Windows, Mac OS X and 
Linux) each talking to a different OS API, to develop this further would 
potentiallyt/probably require knowledge of 3 platforms. Basic SSL is not that 
difficult, the finer points (certificates for example) are more challenging. 
Reaching adequate performance will not be easy (SSL is always slower, the 
question is how much slower). Finally, to test HTTPS, you also have to 
understand HTTP, of course.

On the other hand, there is something that works more or less and that can be 
used as a basis to start from.

Money would help, since you keep on asking, how much would it be worth to you ?

Regards,

Sven


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