Am Sonntag 29 April 2007 19:50 schrieb Marius Mauch:
> On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:43:29 +0200
>
> Roman Zimmermann <mereandor@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Those links Jakub posted are interesting, but I don't find an
> > explanation why this decission was made. Maybe you have a link to
> > that discussion too?
>
> What decision? That USE=static shouldn't be used for (not) installing
> static libraries is simply because the flag is used to control how
> (parts of) a package should be linked and global flags
> shouldn't be used for completely different purposes. That's been the
> case since the beginning, so I doubt you'll find any dicussion about it.
>

There is also the part about: "packages that can install static and shared 
libraries should always be installing them." 
[http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=116026024223024&w=2]
Which means either that this statement was meant for another context (and not 
in such a general meaning) or it says that there shouldn't/won't be a way to 
change this behavior.
In case 1 this misses the point. (As Ciaran pointed out.) Since I was not 
specifically talking about the 'static' useflag.
For case 2 I'm very interested in the reason.