[Python-Dev] Future of SSL

[Guido van Rossum]

> > AMK has such a package:
> > 
> > http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html
> 
> It doesn't offer SSL, however. I've compiled a list of SSL libraries for
> Python:
> 
> http://www.cs.fhm.edu/~ifw00065/pyssl/
> 
> The "Python OpenSSL wrappers" are BSD licensed and could probably serve
> as a good basis for a SSL library in Python itself. It's an early
> release, that I can crash easily if I want to ;-) Also, it would have to
> be modified to fit Python's coding standards (basically, the docstrings
> are all written in DocBook; these would have to be translated to normal
> text). But it's a working solution to start from.

Do you know the author?

> The other BSD licensed one is M2Crypto, which is around much longer, but
> requires SWIG to build. I think SSL support is not reason enough to
> require SWIG for Python builds. So this one is possibly out.

It's definitely out to require SWIG to build Python from a
distribution, but we may require SWIG to hack on this particular
module; we could ship the SWIG output.  Not ideal, but if otherwise
this module is the best candidate, maybe we could live with this.

> The third
> one is LGPL licensed, so it's out immediately.

Really?  I believe the LGPL is not "viral" as the GPL.  Also, there
may be the possibility to shame the author into changing the
license.  Can you review it a bit more technically?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)