curl situation is intolerable

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

reopen 318590
severity 318590 serious
thanks

So my package, libofx, builds a binary that wants to use curl.  My
package is GPL'd.  Getting a libssl exemption is not the right thing,
nor should it be necessary.

I would like to build the package against libcurl3-gnutls-dev which
will be just fine. 

Except that I can't even *install* libcurl3-gnutls-dev on my
development system, because libcurl3-gnutls conflicts with libcurl3,
and openoffice.org and many other important programs I rely on link
against libcurl3.

It is *not acceptible* for two Optional packages to conflict with each
other.  It has been *against policy* for as long as we've had policy.

It is *absolutely intolerable* to declare such conflicts for shared
libraries, where there are easy solutions: MAKE TWO LIBRARIES THAT
HAVE DIFFERENT NAMES.

There should be TWO libcurls, with DIFFERENT names, and then
applications can simply link against whichever one they want, instead
of the current approach, which totally breaks, violates policy, and
doesn't really help much of anyone.

Thomas