[openssl-project] A proposal for an updated OpenSSL version scheme (v2)

[Richard Levitte]

In message <22DFFD58-5686-4FD6-BBB7-00512CC88035 at dukhovni.org> on Fri, 21 Sep 2018 12:29:43 -0400, Viktor Dukhovni <openssl-users at dukhovni.org> said:

> 
> 
> > On Sep 21, 2018, at 12:14 PM, Matt Caswell <matt at openssl.org> wrote:
> > 
> > I support Richard's proposal with an epoch of 1.
> > Grudgingly I would accept an epoch in the 3-8 range.
> > I would oppose an epoch of 2.
> 
> I can live with that, though it might mean that a minority of
> applications will interpret (based on obsolete nibble extraction)
> that OpenSSL 2.0.0 (0x1020000FUL) is actually OpenSSL 1.2.0, but
> that's probably harmless.  It does mean we might never reclaim the
> version numbers with 0x2 for the high nibble.

The applications who currently care since the release of 1.0.0 use
0xfff0000fL as a mask, meaning that they might as well view 0x102 (258
decimal) as the internal major version number.  I haven't seen any
example where anyone cares about the exact nibbles, just that
0xfff00000L gives them something to compare.

For pre-processing, that might be different, I have no clue how people
figure out the exact number to compare OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER...  I
assume, though, that they follow the path of least resistance and
simply pick the current number from opensslv.h.

-- 
Richard Levitte         levitte at openssl.org
OpenSSL Project         http://www.openssl.org/~levitte/