Static linking considered harmful

[Erik LaBianca]

Andrew Haley wrote:

> 
> Well, hold on: that problem is caused by software patents, not by
> packaging issues.  Let's point the finger in the right direction, eh?
> 
> Andrew.

Choose to nit-pick my choice of package if you like, but the problem
extends far beyond mp3 players. There are dozens of fine software
packages that are not patent encumbered and aren't being compiled for
fedora, rhel, or name your other favorite distribution because it isn't
the developers pet distribution. I have dozens of half-baked specfiles
for just such packages sitting around in my home directory that I
eventually gave up on because the dependency tree was just too big.

Just think of the large pain in the rear you'll have to go through to
get an up-to-date browser, email client, media player (sans mp3 if you
wish) on any older (rhel3?) linux distribution. Requiring every project
to effectively fork in some way or another in order to get into every
distributions 'extras' repository isn't a tenable long-term solution.

Compare that to evil-windows... Download latest firefox build, click
install, it works, on darn near any windows variant out there. Most
installer creators for windows will figure out which dll's you're using
that aren't 'standard' and will side-by-side install them with your
application and off you go. Linux applications and distributions need to
be able to support the same level of application-os decoupling in order
to tackle the desktop, and fedora is in a great place to lead the way.

Like Arjen said, this stuff is the reason people statically link, and
they do it because they don't have tools that make doing it the 'right'
way easy for them.

--erik


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