OT program requires .so although versioned .so are provided [Was: Re: packaging libraries with no versioned .so files]

[Matej Cepl]

On 2009-03-19, 07:14 GMT, Alex Lancaster wrote:
> recommend that unversioned .so libraries should go into 
> a -devel package.  I'm reviewing a package, eclib, that has no 
> versioned .so libraries at all:

Sorry for OT question, but I am just fighting with 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=471180 and it seems 
to be similar case. Reporter claims that making a symlink from 
libpsppire.so.0.0 to libpsppire.so makes *THE MAIN PROGRAM* not 
crashing. Does it make any sense to anybody? Is the program 
broken, or did I screw up something in the process of building 
it?

I thought that .so files are only for development, not for using 
the program itself?

(and now I cannot reproduce it on my computer)

Thanks in advance for any response,

Matěj