If there were no filename comflicts, then aout and elf libraries could
   co-exist in /usr/lib.

mine live in `/usraout', and my /usr/libexec/ld.so (a.out) looks there
by default.  COMPAT_AOUT is a crock of sh*t and i will not use it.
      
     Well, I think we should think strongly about bumping major versions for the 
   next release, and getting rid of all renames. The new libraries are not
   compatible with the old ones, regardless of whether the "featureset" has
   changed. 

for who are they not compatible?  2 out of how many ports changed?
do we do this for every port that changes from now?  you need to
realise that binary format is totally separate from shared library
versioning.

lots of us would love to rev the major of libc to clean out all the
RENAME's as you would, but the fall out from this is intensely
prohibitive...