I'd reverse those answers, actually. 1) the mailing list post states that OpenSSL wants to be comprehensive, even when that means providing implementations of

I'd reverse those answers, actually. 1) the mailing list post states that OpenSSL wants to be comprehensive, even when that means providing implementations of algorithms that you probably shouldn't use. The inclusion of weak, or even broken, algorithms does not undermine the product as a whole given this mission. It has no impact on the effectiveness of other, stronger algorithms in OpenSSL. 2) OpenSSL knew that one of the algorithms in the standard was weak, but thought it was still valuable to implement the standard. again, the comprehensiveness goal means it's up to the end users to utilize OpenSSL in a manner consistent with their use case.