@sierdzio
Blimey, yes, that's a bit to read that I am unfamiliar with! I will do so if I want to go down that route, thank you.
As the second reply there states, the fact that Ubuntu is now at libreadline.so.8 implies that it will not be binary compatible with expectations for libreadline.so.7. The change in version number tends to indicate this. That is fair enough.
But then I am equally "surprised" that when I look Ubuntu 20.04 only offers an apt-get install ... choice of libreadline8 or libreadline5. No libreadline7.
Anyway, I have just spoken to a Linux Admin friend, and he says he's not keen on version-independent linking, as the app may indeed fail to work with a newer version. He says he would expect either
Go find the correct old version in an older Ubuntu, and get that.
Or, recompile & relink against what's available now. Which is what I will do, when I have the time.
So @sierdzio thanks for your answer, it's useful to know about the version-independent, but I am going to mark this as my correct solution.