[Gnuplot-info] libgd support threatening gnuplot?

[Keith L. <ke...@kl...>]

List newbie.
I use gnuplot (running on Scientific Linux 5.4) to make lots
of png files.  Gnuplot uses the libgd library for that.

Libgd has received no development since 2007 or so. 
www.libgd.org has been offline for at least a week (when I
started looking for it).  I am concerned that this important
component of gnuplot is unsupported.  As the underlying
dependencies for libgd evolve, it may stop working, and
gnuplot will be crippled.

Hoping to minimize future dependency conflicts for gnuplot,
I tried to compile it statically, but I am not very good at
tweaking configure scripts and makefiles.  All my attempts
produced the normal version, linked to about 30 external
libraries, including libgd.so.2 .  I can probably figure
out a way to copy a working set of these libraries to 
another directory, and recompile for those, but this is
becoming a lot of work to get around a hypothetical risk.
Still, I want to protect my gnuplot (and libgd) investments.

Have gnuplot developers (*) thought about what would happen
if libgd went away?  If the PHP developers (**) aren't doing
anything with libgd, is it time for some other group (hint)
to take over its development?

Keith

(*) ob. praise:  Thank you for your fine work on gnuplot!

(**) ob. sneer:  PHP, the public bathhouse orgy of
programming languages.

(***) ob scold: Shame on me!

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          ke...@ke...         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs