It's the Python 3.4 standard ssl module API implemented on top of pyOpenSSL:

import backports.ssl as ssl
import socket

context = ssl.SSLContext(ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv23)
context.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_REQUIRED

conn = context.wrap_socket(socket.socket(socket.AF_INET))
conn.connect(('google.com', 443))
print conn.getpeercert()
conn.close()

Because the latest web technologies should be available to those running older versions of Python.

If you're on Python 2.7, then probably. But PEP 466 doesn't cover Python 2.6, 3.2, or 3.3, and the ssl.RAND_*() functions are explicitly out of scope. This package supports it all.

Monkey-patching support is included a la gevent:

import backports.ssl.monkey as monkey
import requests

monkey.patch()
requests.get('https://google.com')

Like the standard ssl module, certain attributes will not be available if your OpenSSL does not support them. See Installing OpenSSL for instructions.

• Verify that we play nicely with gevent's monkey-patching.
• Backport and pass the standard Python ssl test suite.
• If not that, automate testing against hyper, urllib3, requests, and Tornado test suites.
• Use the bundled 3.x OpenSSL, if available and newer than the default.