Why <link> and not <style>?

[gpnq]

Why do we type this:\[code\]<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='http://stackoverflow.com/file.css' />\[/code\]Instead of this:\[code\]<style type='text/css' src='http://stackoverflow.com/file.css' />\[/code\]The reason that this seem unintuitive are that we use the \[code\]<style>\[/code\] tag for inline CSS (just as we use the \[code\]<script>\[/code\] tag for both inline and external Javascript).