[Pidgin] #16222: Consider dropping support for either gnutls or libnss

[Pidgin]

#16222: Consider dropping support for either gnutls or libnss
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 Reporter:  MarkDoliner                          |       Owner:  EionRobb
     Type:  task                                 |      Status:  new
Milestone:  3.0.0                                |   Component:
  Version:  2.10.9                               |  unclassified
 Keywords:  tls ssl nss libnss gnutls            |  Resolution:
  certificate certificates x509                  |
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Description changed by MarkDoliner:

Old description:

> We should evaluate whether we still need to provide compatibility with
> both libraries. If it's possible to standardize on one of them then we
> could drop support for the other and reduce the amount of code we
> maintain. It's important for TLS and certificate handling to be correct,
> and reducing the code footprint by half means there's significantly less
> code for us to maintain.
>
> The main consider is whether all operating systems support one or the
> other. I suspect all major Linux distributions package both libraries. Do
> they both work on Windows? Are there any reasons to prefer one over the
> other? Which library is more popular among major apps?
>
> We should also evaluate whether we still need our tls connecting and
> certificate validation to be pluginized. I think most of our PRPLs
> require tls, so there's no great advantage to allowing users to build
> without tls. But maybe Adium wants to be able to use openssl on OS X?
> What about Instantbird?

New description:

 We should evaluate whether we still need to provide compatibility with
 both libraries. If it's possible to standardize on one of them then we
 could drop support for the other and reduce the amount of code we
 maintain. It's important for TLS and certificate handling to be correct,
 and reducing the code footprint by half means there's significantly less
 code for us to maintain.

 The main consideration is whether all operating systems support one or the
 other. I suspect all major Linux distributions package both libraries. Do
 they both work on Windows? Are there any reasons to prefer one over the
 other? Which library is more popular among other major apps?

 We should also evaluate whether we still need our tls connecting and
 certificate validation to be pluginized. I think most of our PRPLs require
 tls, so there's no great advantage to allowing users to build without tls.
 But maybe Adium wants to be able to use openssl on OS X? What about
 Instantbird?

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Ticket URL: <https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/16222#comment:2>
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