I don't see what's so bad about it.  Martin's pretty truthful here.

has it been updated?  that document was written some time ago.
   
   Our VM system DOES suck, and there's a PR on file whose last word is
   "rewrite VM system".  Obviously not something you can do in a weekend.  OTOH,
   bug fixes for the worst 1.2 VM problems were committed, so this isn't so
   much of a problem.

hopefully, many more changes are in store here ....
   
   As for using vi over NFS, I've done that and haven't lost.
 
our vi has mmap() turned off.
   
   A lot of the source changes are cosmetic, and don't add functionality.

i'm not trying to start a flame war with any freebsd people here but
from what i've seen, freebsd have been -at least- as ``bad'' as netbsd
in this...  either way, i think it's fairly insignificant.

also, i've seen several changes that ``don't add functionality'' that
actually fix problems.  eg, prefixing all the system calls in the
kernel source tree with `sys_' could be called cosmetic.  but it
stops there being functions with the same name but different arguments
(see:  kernel printf(), __KPRINTF_ATTRIBUTE__(?), etc.)

   If I was running 1.2-release and had to upgrade a C file because of a bug
   I reported, fixed in -current, then would I have to upgrade to -current?
   Maybe.

hopefully, it was fixed in 1.2.1 ... :-)  but what does this have to
do with netbsd/freebsd?  this problem will exist in *any* operating
system ... be it free or commercial, that you are building from
sources with ...
   
   It also makes it hard to maintain packages.  How many times have we imported
   IPfilter, and then made our NetBSD-specific cosmetic changes?

dunno, the importation of ip-filter is handled via a couple of things.
one is the the ipfilter2netbsd script i wrote that massages a ipfilter
source tree into the various parts that netbsd has, then someone
(darren -- just today!  :-) runs cvs import over these bits.. and then
cleans up any cvs lossage.

also, what does this have to do with netbsd/freebsd?  darren maintains
ipfilter for both.
   
   If I had to start all over, and I had only PC hardware, I'd probably install
   FreeBSD too, since it is more user-friendly, and the kernel code is closer to
   the original 4.4BSD sources.  But I have an Amiga and a Sparc, so it's either

again, i have to disagree with this "closer to 4.4" comment.

   NetBSD or Linux.  Easy choice. :-)

:-)