Woohoo! I now have a hacked-up version of rsvg that renders text with freetype 2. Here's a sample. If you want to play with the code, it's here. You may have more luck with makefile-simple than trying to get autoconf to work.
Advogato is apparently going to get written up in Salon soon. They're the #2 news source to pick up on it, after lwn.
I have a bunch more things to say, but am tired now and need sleep. In short: Vorbis rocks. Linux business deals are weird.
Oh yes, and I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly bash Linux World Expo for being clueless. After the amazing experience of Guadec, I marveled at the contrast between that and the trade-show oriented linux expos, of which LWE is exemplary. Then I came up with an idea to make this kind of show more appealing to free software developers: have a hacking room set up with comfortable chairs and network connections, specifically for us hackers. Well, when I heard back from them on this suggestion, they basically said, "don't call us, we'll call you." Now, to me it's obvious that setting up a room like this could make the show a lot more interesting and fun for hackers. But I guess they just don't get it. So, if you want to find me at LWE, I'll almost certainly be in the Gnu booth.