Well, the change in the build config was meant as first step to prepare getting rid of Berkeley-DB as hard installation dependency. Because it is probably a bad idea to statically link backends deemed deprecated by the OpenLDAP developers for some years already. ;-]
It's questionable as to why it was built anything other than as a module in the first place. Modular support for backends and overlays has existed for a very long time.
--Quanah -- Quanah Gibson-Mount Product Architect Symas Corporation Packaged, certified, and supported LDAP solutions powered by OpenLDAP: <http://www.symas.com>