Shared libraries are a fantastic idea. Static linking wastes system resources and makes system-wide library updates problematic. Docker's approach to things is essentially a higher level form of static linking, which is to say that it's not a very good approach. It's papering over the package management problem. We need general-purpose package management systems that allow for different applications to use different versions of shared libraries without interference. Luckily, the Nix and GNU Guix projects solve this problem very well, if only they could get some more "mindshare."