I have released last week the October 2012 edition of my MinGW Distro. Also available are a number of add-on libraries built with it. This time I also included in both ICU and SDL packages DLL versions of the libraries.
For ICU the reason is to minimize the size of generated binaries. ICU has a data library that contains charset and localization information. Statically linking the data library makes the programs too big. And if you have many programs this just makes things worse. Now you can dynamic link with the data library (and of course with the other ICU libraries) easing the deployment of your applications.
SDL is relased under LGPL license that imposes restrictions on how to distribute your application. Basically: according to LGPL you have to distribute the source code of your application if you (statically) link with the library. Dynamic link does not impose this restriction.
