title: Can non static log be justified?
body: <p>I'm the only maintainer on a codebase where logging is done using Apache commons logging.</p>
  
  <p>All classes contains these two imports:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
  import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then a lot of classes contains non static log instantiation like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/** The log. */
  private Log log = LogFactory.getLog(Xyz.class);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can this be justified?</p>
  
  <p>Can I safely change all these to static calls?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong> Regarding the special cases where it can (apparently) be handy: my question is really more <em>"Can non static log all over the codebase be justified?"</em></p>