On Sun, 30 Apr 2017 09:48:58 -0400
Brian Evans <grknight@gentoo.org> wrote:

> If they want to enable a flag to apply system-wide, then it does not
> matter where the description is. To users, a USE flag is a USE flag.

Terminology wise, this is more a side effect that users are exposed to
global methods of setting use flags first, and specific methods of
setting use flags second.

The reality is *all* USE flags have behaviour specific to the packages
they're on.

Just some packages share the same interpretations of the same flags,
and so it *can* make sense to set them simultaneously for multiple
packages.

But this ends up in a "Cognition, Language, Naming things and
Namespaces are hard" corner either way.