.. _intro:

Introduction
============

The reason pyOpenSSL was created is that the SSL support in the socket module in
Python 2.1 (the contemporary version of Python when the pyOpenSSL project was
begun) was severely limited.  Other OpenSSL wrappers for Python at the time were
also limited, though in different ways.  Unfortunately, Python's standard
library SSL support has remained weak, although other packages (such as
`M2Crypto <http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/MeTooCrypto>`_)
have made great advances and now equal or exceed pyOpenSSL's functionality.

The reason pyOpenSSL continues to be maintained is that there is a significant
user community around it, as well as a large amount of software which depends on
it.  It is a great benefit to many people for pyOpenSSL to continue to exist and
advance.
