> I agree, why change?

There are some very good arguments for changing it.

[  Warning -- somewhat slightly scattered thoughts follow...  ]

The most compelling (IMO) is to provide a standard method for
user-added (or package-added) startup and shutdown scripts in
the proper part of the startup sequence without unduly modifying
the standard installation.

I, also, dislike the notion of run-levels, and they should not be
tied into this argument since they're completely different.

One advantage to the numbered scripts (which I don't think I've seen
mentioned explicitly) is that you know (modulo the confusion aspect ;-)
what the ordering of scripts is just by looking in the directory.

I like Fred's/Apple's design for their system--not that it's right
for NetBSD, but it definitely has some plusses that should not be
overlooked.

One thing we should probably do is make a well-known list of subsystems
and define precisely what they mean.  I've been rather annoyed with NT
(well, for lots of reasons, but one way that's germane to this disc.)
because I created a service that depends on TCP/IP networking--it needs
networking to be running when it starts and it needs to stop before the
TCP/IP subsystem is stopped.  NT has a name-based dependency system stored
in the registry, but it's not clear what is constant and defined on all
systems or what may or may not change between different configurations
or new releases of the OS.

-allen