econf dies during emerge because it cannot find the activation jar file.
<<error snippet>>
checking for /usr/share/activation/lib/activation.jar... configure: error: can't find activation.jar in specified path
!!! ERROR: dev-java/gnu-javamail-20040331 failed.
!!! Function econf, Line 365, Exitcode 1
!!! econf failed
<<end snippet>>
emerge -s activation shows only two packages that match gnu-activation and bonobo-activation. I provided a patch that uses gnu-activation in order to get it to install. Since there are no other java activation packages I didn't think it would hurt.