Hi Nick,

i'm not speaking for LibreSSL, but about OpenBSD subprojects in general;
i'm running src/usr.bin/mandoc (portable version: mdocml.bsd.lv).

Nicholas Wilson wrote on Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 02:05:16PM +0100:

> Certainly from my point of view it would make things simpler if
> LibreSSL were run more like a normal project on github or bitbucket,
> with one portable trunk and a script that OpenBSD can use to *remove*
> the compat source when they do a sync.

I'm bold enough to say that is not going to happen.  Safe development
practices are paramount to OpenBSD sub-projects.  In particular, the
master version of the code must be clean and concise in order to make
it easy to spot bugs.  The master version must never contain portability
goo (it does use portable interfaces though where those ones are the
best ones available).

Portability goo clutters code and reduces readability, and hence
endangers correctness and security.  That's not going to happen
for code used in OpenBSD itself, that will remain restricted to the
portable versions.  Looked at from the wrong perspective, that may
look like we wanted to make OpenBSD good and everyone else suffer.
But that's not the point.  Making a portable version is *impossible*
without some clutter (even though the portability goo in OpenBSD
sub-projects is often less heavy than the clutter you find in some
other project's master repos).  So the goo in *-portable is
unavoidable, not chicane.  The OpenBSD-only version *can* be better,
and that's why we make it better.  To actually be better, it must
be the master version, not something derived from portable.

> Is the intention that LibreSSL core development will be mostly done
> by the OpenBSD community, or is it hoped that it will attract more
> contributions from outside?

OpenBSD sub-projects gladly accept outside contributions based on
their respective merit.  For the contributor sending a patch every
odd month, it doesn't really matter which repo they sync with and
whether that repo lags by a day or two.  For the prolific contributor,
solutions will be found in due time; there is a risk of becoming
a developer, for example.

Yours,
  Ingo

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