&gt; Security patches don&#x27;t break the API.<p><i></i>shouldn&#x27;t<p>When the patched library is not part of Debian Stable or RHEL&#x27;s repositories (for example, if you require features from a release less than a year old) all bets of API stability are off.<p>OpenSSL and libc are not the only libraries which are  patched for security that people use.