Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???> writes:
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 12:45:22PM +1300, Daniel Reurich wrote:

[libdb4 & Bitcoin]

>> The risk is that issues that have been fixed in later libdb versions
>> remain broken in the version that bitcoin statically links in. So there
>> is a trade off either way, and what is the better approach... fix
>> bitcoin or forever hold onto an obsolete library for one package where
>> the maintainers refuse to switch to a newer version.
>
> It's probably the job of the bitcoin developers to watch deveopments
> in that other library and decide when it is safe or necessary to change
> versions.

There's an obvious, alternate option: libdb is (certainly at least until
4.8) BSD-licensed. This means "the right version" can just be
integrated into the Bitcoin code at the expense of the developers having
to maintain it themselves.