[rquirk]

This isn't really a Docker thing though, is it? It is talking about the case of a program that includes its dependencies in its own source code tree. I think docker-ized programs would still link against e.g. the system libssl rather than ship a copy of an ssl library with a program's source. Another term sometimes used is "vendoring".

A lot of Java programs ship jar files in their source tarballs, it has traditionally been a lot of work for Debian devs to pick these apart. Similarly, many "things" (programs or web services) that use javascript libraries often ship minified versions of common stuff like jquery rather than use the system version. It's quite a mess. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that traditionally these sorts of libraries (jars, javascript) have not been well packaged or even packaged at all. The program authors are making life easier for the majority by shipping all the deps together. It's not good for distros, but I can see the advantage.

I think subversion has a nice work around for this - they include a script to download the dependencies if you need them, otherwise the default is to link vs system deps.