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Not exactly the same—shared libs don't have process isolation like an external crypto process would.

Yeah, definitely a po-ta-to distinction.

The real difference between static and dynamic linking is self-contained vs. external dependencies. This dependency can be actual "linking" or it can be inter-process; I don't think that changes the equation.

Interesting fact: while not all shared object files are executable (or rather: do something interesting other than dump core), some most definitely are: try executing libc someday: $ /usr/lib/libc.so.6

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1449987/building-a-so-tha... for more information.