Contributors to the OpenSSL Library (June 2025)
Every month the OpenSSL Library receives code in the form of pull requests (PR) to GitHub. In June, 64 of those PRs were merged into the default branch of the repository thus becoming a part of the OpenSSL Library code base. Some of those changes came from developers paid by either the OpenSSL Foundation or the OpenSSL Corporation. Some of the changes come from developers who work for another company. And some, ~40% so far in 2025, come from individuals.
Seven PRs in June came from people contributing to the OpenSSL Library for the very first time:
- collinfunk: doc: fix misspellings of certificate(s)
- cnt0: Fix NIST ACVP server URLs in SLH-DSA test files
- RulerOfTheQueendom: Begin incorporating <stdbool.h> usage in json encoding
- jrtc27: armv*-mont.pl: Correct a carry flag comment
- kanagavels97: Fixes #27831: Decreased NAMEMAP_HT_BUCKETS to 512.
- cvoncp: Fix nullpointer dereference in OSSL_PARAM_merge
- gitcnd: Remove accidentally left debug statements from ec.c
Each of these PRs represent an annoyance fixed and we’re grateful that they made the OpenSSL Library just a bit better. Kanagavel’s fix, though it was simply a change in a constant from 2048 to 512, had an immediate and positive effect on the memory footprint benchmark:
Even better, this change followed an ideal path. It started as a GitHub issue: Facing memory allocation fail due to large amount of memory requested for HashTable in PEI phase while RSA context creation. In it, Kanagavel explained the problem, proposed a solution and asked for guidance on any possible side effects. Several active members of the project considered the proposal and a few days later everyone agreed a PR would be a good next step.
Once the PR was proposed, our extensive test suite was automatically initiated. There being no failed tests, Tomáš Mráz conducted some performance measurements and confirmed measurable impact on memory and no impact on performance. Finally the change was merged not only to the master branch, but also to 3.4 and 3.5. If you’d like to get this improvement, it has been included in the latest point release.
For some that first PR could break the ice for more contributions. In June jajik submitted a second PR: Skip OS Zoo CI jobs that use custom runners in forks. The first PR was Prevent CI jobs with secrets from running in forks so I see a pattern of fixing Continuous Integration (CI) tasks that fail for repository forks.
If you’d like to learn how to help, take a look at our Getting Started as a Contributor page. See you next month when we highlight some contributions in July.