Package apr-devel contains the file %{_libdir}/libapr-1.la The packaging policies sayys thst packagess should not contains files with the extension .a or .la if there not a good reason to do it.
apr-1-config script has an option --link-libtool, which returns this file. If we remove it from apr-devel, we shall break source compatibility of packages that depend on this option in order to build against apr. This is against project's versioning rules. See: http://apr.apache.org/versioning.html#source
I think we should patch this script. In rawhide we can make changes which may break the compatiblity. Of corse we should not port this update on F-9 aor F-8.
No. The packaging guidelines' "should not" is not a mandate for removal and does not trump following upstream. We have a good reason for keeping there, I've been over this several times already, see the review bug.