Rationale for giving .so files +x

[Serge van den Boom]

Hi,

What's the rationale for setting the executable bit on shared object files?

The rest of a POSIX system treats files with the executable bit set as files
that can be execve()'ed. With a few exceptions such as libc.so and ld.so,
this is not the case for shared object files (at least not without an
immediate SIGSEGV).

Any insights?

Thanks,

Serge