Chris,
Not sure what copying them to PB's shared directory would accomplish over simply using them from another directory. But tried that, and the expected result occurred. Regardless of location of the files, it's easy enough to simply orchestrate which DLLs will be used via the search path, so that's not an issue. But ya, as I stated previously, the temporary workaround I found was to use the older DLLs.
However, as simple as that might be, in the end, it's not that simple. Sure, that accomplishes the source control task "for now", it doesn't solve the issue that those DLLs are 6 years old, and OpenSSL has indicated they will be terminating support on the 0.9.8 verions by December of next year. That might seem like a ways away, but this year is almost over, and PowerBuilder's future appears to be a bit shaky at the moment, with a downgraded 12.6 release. Not only that, OpenSSL, keeps coming out with security patches to their libraries, so unless you or I are downloading and compiling those libraries ourselves, or getting them through EBF's that we "might" install, we retain the documented vulnerability that exists.
The fact that 9.0 and 12.6 fail using the 12.6 DLLs is of great concern, because if their libraries have changed that much to affect SCC, what else has changed? You have to now be concerned about developing against those DLLs and be locked into deploying those DLLs, with their security vulnerabilities, or play some DLL swapping game to try to manage source code with one set of DLLs, and code against another, and hope you don't screw up along the way.
So ya, while the solution may appear to be simple, it's complex as you consider the entire path for your solution, from development, to deployment and distribution, especially if you work for someone that takes security vulnerabiliites extremely seriously.
In the end, I might be able to switch over to a different source control tool, so we shall see. I'm not really up for playing the DLL swapping game, too many moving parts prone to human error.
--Brian