ld complains because the objects have been compiled without -fPIC :
-------
gcc -O2 -g -Wall `pkg-config --cflags glib-2.0 gaim` -DPLUGIN_VERSION=0.5 -DPRIVATE_TZLIB -DCUSTOM_GTK -c -o buddyedit.o buddyedit.c
gcc -shared `pkg-config --libs glib-2.0 gaim` -o buddyedit.so buddyedit.o
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.6/../../../../x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld: buddyedit.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
buddyedit.o: could not read symbols: Bad value
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [buddyedit.so] Error 1
-------
adding -fPIC to CFLAGS in the Makfile resolves the problem.