> NetBSD philosophy (or at least that of one tiny script) seems to
> disagree with you and treats /scratch in an identical manner to /tmp.
> 
> > I should remind you, /scratch _WASN'T LOCAL_ - it was NFS mounted!
> 
> On this point we can certainly agree.  I would normally consider
> /scratch to be storage which could be shared, and as thus only the
> server should be cleaning it on a regular basis.

Let's assume that we all agree that /scratch is material of a transient
nature.  The real problem is that the NetBSD core team imposed an
undocumented policy that overrides whatever policy might have been
in place.  For example, I could...

- delete anything over a week old in /scratch
- delete everything once a week
- etc.

This type of policy is not a decision for the core team to make, esp.
when it is so destructive.