Policy on API compatibility in minor releases

The public API of the OpenSSL libraries is defined as functions, macros, data structure declarations, typedefs, and data variables in header files in the include/openssl subdirectory of the source tree and include/openssl subdirectory of the build tree.

No changes to existing public API functions and data are permitted. This includes, but is not limited to:

• constification of arguments;
• changing void returns to int returns;
• changing a macro to a function and
• corrections of spelling.

Only API additions are allowed in minor releases.

Although the changes as listed above might be regarded as ABI compatible, they cause various possible breakage when building applications depending on these APIs and thus they are not allowed in minor releases.

If necessary, a new API call can be added to implement the required changes in minor releases.