[kalleboo]

> If it is in the OS then it becomes brittle

My experience is the opposite. When it's part of the OS, it's stable and you just say "you need OS version X or better" and it will just work. When it's a library, you eventually end up in dependency hell of deprecated libraries and differing versions (or worst case, the JavaScript ecosystem when the platform provides almost nothing and you get npm).

[rlpb]

Depends on the OS I guess. When it's established enough, all distributions carry a high enough version that it's not an issue. If it's not established enough, I'd argue that it isn't ready to be part of an "OS" anyway (regardless of the definition of that word).