Java is a simple language, used as the intro learning language in most
universities that I know of. Not having to plan memory management like
c++ motivates very fast development. Compiling small utils with it and
having them be portable, even on GNU systems, is an incredible selling
point. This isn't really possible without static linking.
Sometimes I see a great divide between the developers of gcj, and the
actual users of it. It seems to only target the server setting, or the
user who wishes to compile existing apps and only run them on their
own system. This target could be much wider in scope with static
linking.