Comparing OpenSSL with NSS
Network Security Services (NSS) is the first SSL/TLS library. It originated as security code inside the Netscape Navigator 1.0 browser, released in 1994 by Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape also invented the SSL protocol, the predecessor of the TLS protocol. Netscape Navigator was succeeded by Netscape Communicator, which was succeeded by the Mozilla browser, which was finally succeeded by Firefox. Soon after the release of Netscape Communicator 4.0 in 1997, the Netscape security code was released as a separate library, named Hard Core Library (HCL). HCL was later renamed NSS.
The NSS library is licensed under Mozilla Public License 2.0, which allows application developers to use the library in both open source and closed source applications.
Notable applications that use the NSS library are applications of Mozilla Foundation, such as Firefox and Thunderbird, some applications from Oracle and Red Hat, and some open source office applications such as LibreOffice and Evolution. While this is a list of solid and respected companies and applications, despite NSS having a long history, it did not become as popular as OpenSSL. I am unsure why. Some people say that OpenSSL is easier to use and has better documentation.
Should you choose NSS or OpenSSL? I recommend OpenSSL because it has better documentation and a larger community of developers and users.
Both NSS and GnuTLS provide their main API in C. However, the Botan library is different, as we’ll find out in the next section.
