Including shared libraries in a package

[Brian Thomason]

Hey guys,

In handling Partner Repo packages, it is quite common to see vendors include
their own copies of libraries within their own packages.  They do this for
various reasons.  Parallels, for instance, does it for both QA and licensing
purposes.  They include common libraries so that they only have to QA one
build across many Linuxes. This, we try to recommend against and have them
link against the system libraries instead, but we meet with varying success
there.

However, they also include their own build of QT for licensing reasons,
since they own a commercial license to QT and can't link against the GPLed
version we provide.

Another common reason vendors include copies of libraries, as is the case
with the upcoming Alfresco and Zarafa packages, is because the ones we
provide aren't new enough for them.  With the Open Source Ubuntu model, this
isn't a concern, as the package will simply wait to be included in the
upcoming dist with newer versions of the required libraries available.
However, for commercial vendors, it isn't that easy.  Most of our
server-oriented vendors want to be in the artner Repo for LTS releases
only.  So, with Zarafa, we are including some libraries in the package
itself and for Alfresco, we are including a statically linked version of the
pdf2swf application to meet their needs.

Now that I have bored you sufficiently, my question really is: Is there a
better way to meet their needs that also better follows our standard
practices?

Best regards,

Brian
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