Curiously, in the openssl-0.9.7b sources, the line
"
#define RSA_FLAG_THREAD_SAFE         0x10"
only ever appears in exactly 
one place:
  
$ find . -type f -print | xargs grep RSA_FLAG_THREAD_SAFE
./crypto/rsa/rsa.h:#define RSA_FLAG_THREAD_SAFE         0x10
  
but that's the only occurrence of the string "RSA_FLAG_THREAD_SAFE"
anywhere in the sources.  I thought perhaps the build process might do
something funky to use that, so I did:
  
$ ./config threads shared
$ make
  
and checked again.  Nope, no difference.  Whatever that
RSA_FLAG_THREAD_SAFE is supposed to be for, it appears to never be
used.  (On this Red Hat 7.3 system anyway.)