MATLAB functions work differently from member functions in C++. In particular, there is no requirement that the first argument needs to be "self/this". The closest C++ correspondence to such a non-static method in MATLAB is a static function. It therefore makes sense to add a %feature marker to static C++ functions allowing them to be mapped to non-static methods in the MATLAB proxy.
MATLAB functions work differently from member functions in C++. In particular, there is no requirement that the first argument needs to be "self/this". The closest C++ correspondence to such a non-static method in MATLAB is a static function. It therefore makes sense to add a %feature marker to static C++ functions allowing them to be mapped to non-static methods in the MATLAB proxy.