> Those shared libraries are a way to create plugins for commercial software. That is an entirely reasonable use. And one that can have specific types and ABI

> Those shared libraries are a way to create plugins for commercial software. That is an entirely reasonable use. And one that can have specific types and ABI guarantees for the commercial software and the plug-in. In addition, this would only be required if you were the developer of the commercial software or a plug-in. One example of this is COM which had specific types and memory allocation/deallocation. However, the case where the C standard library is being dynamically linked, forces everyone to pay the price for ABI stability.