Why do inline functions have external linkage by default?

Question

The standard says that given a declaration of

inline void foo();

that foo is an inline function with external linkage (becaus

Answer 1

One result of that decision is that a static variable defined within an inline function will be shared between all instantiations of the function. If the default had been internal linkage, each translation unit would have gotten its own copy of the static variable. That's not how people expect things to work - inline vs. non-inline shouldn't affect the code semantics so drastically.