I'm not an FPC developer so I know nothng of their reasons but one fundamental difference between Delphi and FPC has always been the multi-platform nature of the later. Too achieve this it is usually useful to rely on multi-platform libraries and since the more widely used multi-platform SSL lib is OpenSSL ... well there you have it. It's something similar to the reliance on SDL/OpenGL for graphics/mutimedia--although not so marked with these.
Note also that both Indy and Synapse, the more used web libraries for Delphi, depend on OpenSSL too (or other even more esoteric libs in the case of Synapse), so there must be something going for it.
thanks for your answer.
while I understand that FPC supports far more platforms than Delphi, it is saddening that we have to depend on an external library (that cannot be statically linked as a single binary with our program),
it would have been better (at least in my own view) to encapsulate the native SSL capabilities of at least the most popular platforms like Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and use OpenSSL for other unpopular platforms.
But what do I know, am just a regular joe who loves and uses FPC because of its cross platform abilities without having to depend on external libraries (binaries).
Waiting for other people's view on this though.
Note also that both Indy and Synapse, the more used web libraries for Delphi, depend on OpenSSL too (or other even more esoteric libs in the case of Synapse), so there must be something going for it.
Regarding this, I think it is more about taking the easy way out.
Thanks once again.