There are a couple issues that might affect your installation. First, you might want to compile your Apache server statically, as in, no dynamically loadable modules. This usually fixes the problems when compiling SSL into the mix with the other modules. This means not configuring apache with --enable-shared on the command line.

Secondly, Perl could very well be the problem, but not necessarily for the reason you think. Your friend suggested that Perl might be compiled statically. The term "static" can be confusing, and I believe what he meant was that Perl should be compiled so that perl modules can be dynamically loaded into it at run-time. Running "ldd" on the Perl binary won't provide useful information, since it is possible to have perl compiled to not dynamically load perl modules, but still be compiled dynamically itself. In any the case, I don't believe this is how your Perl is compiled, especially one that comes with FreeBSD!

Finally, when I have had problems with mod_perl when it is compiled into Apache with PHP and ApacheSSL (not mod_ssl), the problem was that Perl came with the OS, and was compiled using a different C compiler, different location for C libraries etc. Perl remembers all this information and uses it when you are building new modules that will get installed into Perl. I see above that gcc 2.95.3 was used (though, it was called 'cc'). Check the version of your compiler and location of its libs to see if that is the problem.

In the end, the solution will probably be the same. You need to recompile Perl. This means that the settings that will get saved into the Perl core (which is what you listed above) will reflect your system libraries, compiler etc, which will be used to build various things, like mod_perl.

Incidentally, you won't always run into the above problem... but mod_perl is a gigantic module, and does seem to trigger the problem.

Good luck!
Zucan