Nope, it is impossible to link statically against the SDK as it provides .so only. This is rather strange - and my guess is that sources on sf.net are out of sync with my copy.
I took both the sources and the binary from your site, not from sf.net. But yes, looks like the binary plugin is having trouble communicating with the program compiled from sources.
I'll need libssl.so.0.9.8, too. Thanks.