Re: [systemd-devel] Antw: [EXT] RFC: Moving fully to OpenSSL (aka. stopping support for gnutls/gcrypt)?

2020-12-09 Thread Lennart Poettering
On Mi, 09.12.20 10:55, Ulrich Windl (ulrich.wi...@rz.uni-regensburg.de) wrote:

> > This is of course less than ideal, since it means we need to maintain
> > needlessly complex, redundant code to support this, it's not complete
> > (as not all combinations are supported), and footprint for general
> > purpose distros is effectively doubled.
> >
> > I think we should go OpenSSL all the way, and replace/drop support for
> > gnutls and libgcrypt, unifying on a single crypto library. This was
> > previously problematic since on Debian linking LGPL code against
> > OpenSSL was considered legally "unclean". This has recently changed
> > though:
>
> What about this:
> Have a mechanism to select either gnutls or openssl for everything.

Hu, no. I am not gonna write *more* code to get rid of code. The goal
is to make the footprint smaller, not to make it larger.

> Then see how many people will use gnutls and how many will use openssl.
> Then decide what to do.

We won't see that. The distro people make decisions what to enable and
what not. They might as well tell us right-away then. Which is what I
am asking for here: if anyone actually cares about gnutls/gcrypt
support and what the reasons for them are.

I want something stronger than "I like" and "I dislike". I want to
hear technical, or legal reasons. Not "taste".

Lennart

--
Lennart Poettering, Berlin
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[systemd-devel] Antw: [EXT] RFC: Moving fully to OpenSSL (aka. stopping support for gnutls/gcrypt)?

2020-12-09 Thread Ulrich Windl
>>> Lennart Poettering  schrieb am 09.12.2020 um 10:50
in
Nachricht <20201209095057.GA30977@gardel-login>:
> Heya!
> 
> Currently, some parts of the systemd tree link against OpenSSL, others
> link against gnutls and libgcrypt, and even others support either,
> controlled by a compile time switch.
> 
> This is of course less than ideal, since it means we need to maintain
> needlessly complex, redundant code to support this, it's not complete
> (as not all combinations are supported), and footprint for general
> purpose distros is effectively doubled.
> 
> I think we should go OpenSSL all the way, and replace/drop support for
> gnutls and libgcrypt, unifying on a single crypto library. This was
> previously problematic since on Debian linking LGPL code against
> OpenSSL was considered legally "unclean". This has recently changed
> though:

What about this:
Have a mechanism to select either gnutls or openssl for everything.
Then see how many people will use gnutls and how many will use openssl.
Then decide what to do.

> 
> https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/14743#issuecomment‑739001595 
> 
> Hence, given that the legal issues around going OpenSSL exclusively
> all the way are gone, I think it's time to do the full switch. Hence
> I'd like to propose that we start transitioning with depending only on
> OpenSSL sooner or later. This means:
> 
> 1. Porting the currently remaining GnuTLS/gcrypt‑only code over to openssl
> 
> 2. Dropping redundant implementations for gnutls/gcrypt where we
>already have openssl support
> 
> 3. Require for new code to be openssl‑only.
> 
> Ultimately this should provide us with a smaller codebase, smaller OS
> footprint and easier maintainance.
> 
> Before we make this decision and switch over I'd like to hear opinions
> on this, though. Maybe I am missing something, and there are other
> reasons why people want to keep gnutls/gcrypt support around?
> 
> Why unify on OpenSSL instead of doing it the other way and unify on
> gnutls + gcrypt, btw? We don't really have any horse in that race. All
> crypto libraries have well documented issues, like any code. It
> appears to me though that OpenSSL has the more active and larger
> community and wider industry support. It appears to me that dropping
> gntuls/gcrypt frrom the basic OS package set is easier to reach then
> dropping OpenSSL. In the interest of making the minimal set of OS
> packages required to boot a system smaller I think OpenSSL is the
> better choice.
> 
> The fabled future OpenSSL 3 release is supposed to come with a changed
> license, which will attack the Debian license incompatibility from
> another angle btw. It was supposed to be released many months ago
> already, afaiu, but that unfortunately never happened. So far we were
> counting on this to resolve the licensing situation around crypto
> libraries. Due to the Debian change I figure we can speed up things
> now, though.
> 
> Lennart
> 
> ‑‑
> Lennart Poettering, Berlin
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