Sorry everyone, I was doing a good job of keeping out of this,
mainly because I can't see how to respond to any of these complaints
without risking offending people.  So appologies in advance...

der Mouse writes:
>> people on the wrong list ... that's 30 to 12.  Still almost 3 to 1.

>I would not call that a consensus, not by any stretch of the
>imagination.

Um, so?  Since when did the NetBSD charter say that no change shall be
made unless agreed to by 100% of users?  Or even developers?

>I, at least, was saying more like "monolithic rc is significantly
>easier for *human* boot script maintenance".

Only if you are managing a number of machines small enough that such
an approach is viable.  Are you demanding that the project forever 
condem itself to catering for the one or two machine at home hacker?
Why?  Why should all the people who put time and effort into the project
(and I know this inlcudes yourself), have to accept that because 
a vocal minority wish it?

>Like anything involving subjective terms like "easier", that's at least
>partially a matter of opinion.  Yet in all the flap, I have seen at
>most one lone message even disagreeing with it.  One.  (Most of the

Because most of us acknowledged years ago that this is a religious
issue, that will never obtain concensus and that rehashing the same
old rants/raves is simply a waste of everyone's time and bandwidth.
For many of  us, time is very hard to come by so we prefer not to
spending talking at walls.  I'm not accusing mouse or anyone of not
listening, just that it is well established that people have 
preferences which they will not change.

BTW there is no rule that says you have to use any of this stuff.
Since you are obviously competent and interested in frobbing /etc/rc
and rc.local you can continue to do so - on your machines.
Just don't demand that the rest of us do that - for the benefit of
a small minority of users.

--sjg