I have two questions regarding this package, one general and one specific.
 

The specific one is that the files are installed in /usr/pkg/freetds/*,
which I think is wrong.  That seems to be driven by "GNU_CONFIGURE_PREFIX=
  ${PREFIX}/freetds" in the Makefile.  

Should I fix this and send-pr, or is there some greater scheme of which
I'm not aware?  

The general question is how to affect dependencies.  FreeTDS-the-package
depends on libiconv-1.8.  FreeTDS-the-library doesn't.  It can use
libiconv, or not, and there's certainly nothing in 1.8 that it requires. 
I know this because I hack on the project.  

I know a policy was chosen (which I don't dispute) to tell packages they
always need the latest, but in my case my whole Gnome house of cards (now
you know) would have fallen down if I'd upgraded libiconv.  I could have
forced a second libiconv installation, but I try to avoid that sort of
thing because I don't understand all the ramifications.  

I created ../../converters/libiconv/buildlink2.jkl.mk, which is a copy of
buildlink2.mk with the minimum version reduced, and changed
/usr/pkgsrc/databases/freetds/Makefile to include it.  Worked like a
charm.  

But... Was that the right thing to do?

Many thanks.

--jkl