On Mon, 9 May 2005, Ben Greear wrote:

> Any particular reason we would want to be using GnuTLS instead of OpenSSL?

I added the GnuTLS support mainly for two reasons.

The biggest one is the license issue that prevents GPL programs to distribute
binaries linked with OpenSSL (without an exception added to the GPL license).
I know there are people out there who considers this a (serious) problem.
Starting now, they can opt to go the libcurl-GnuTLS route instead. Of course
there are also people who think the opposite who wants to avoid GnuTLS because
of their LGPL license and instead prefers OpenSSL's BSD one.

With this work, I've also paved the road for future support for other SSL
libraries. The code has now turned rather lib-agnostic and it should be easy
to add more.

Also, with this, people can pick the lib they think is the best and has the
features they want or need. We don't have to do that choice for them. Who
knows, they are probably developed differently with different goals and
mindsets etc.

As a bonus, my work on this was sponsored by The Written Word.

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