If I was just working in a SaaS world then maybe static linking isn't a big deal, but I ship and support software across 4 different versions of glibc, libstdc++, and any runtimes for various languages ( Java, python, php, ...). Also I have various versions of MySQL and command line tools. The only things I can guarantee I have are ssh and something that will respond to MySQL connections. In that world being able to push out a single binary and have it just work is priceless.