> Pretty much the only case shared libraries really make sense is for truly standardized system libraries that are everywhere, and are part of the base distro.
I dare say this also adds credit to the approach of FreeBSD, where the base system itself includes some basic libraries such as openssl, etc. Updating the system patches the libraries uniformly, so any ports using them are automatically patched. And there is no problem with security patches breaking compatibility, because the version of libraries in base remains mostly stable for a particular version of FreeBSD and security patches are backported as necessary. Which is of course what happens in popular long-term support Linux distributions too, albeit at the package level.
It is also possible to have ports that use a different version of a library too, though that often requires building custom packages locally or via a centralized Poudriere builder.
I dare say this also adds credit to the approach of FreeBSD, where the base system itself includes some basic libraries such as openssl, etc. Updating the system patches the libraries uniformly, so any ports using them are automatically patched. And there is no problem with security patches breaking compatibility, because the version of libraries in base remains mostly stable for a particular version of FreeBSD and security patches are backported as necessary. Which is of course what happens in popular long-term support Linux distributions too, albeit at the package level.
It is also possible to have ports that use a different version of a library too, though that often requires building custom packages locally or via a centralized Poudriere builder.