With reference to the Debian Policy Chapter 10.2

The reason for compiling with the -fPIC flag, even though the binary package
will only contain a static library, is that this static library will be used
to build shared libraries (lua modules, or with a terminology common with
other applications, plug-ins).
Without instructing the compiler to use position independent code in the
static library, when the compiler will attempt linking this library to make
the shared libraries relocation will fail.

Alternatively, there is an option given upstream to build a shared library
instead of the static one.
However this is badly supported upstream, as a matter of fact this "shared"
library doesn't even have a soname.
Therefore I preferred to include a static library and compile it with position
independent code.

 -- Cesare Tirabassi <norsetto@ubuntu.com>  Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:08:28 +0200