> The big advantage that this has over .o files in NetBSD (which is a
> "normally-source" environment) is that people can more easily check
> the uuencoded files into their revision control trees (without having
> to worry about RCS keyword expansion, or 8-bit cleanliness, or
> anything else).

uuencoding also allows you to put a short explanatory text at the beginning
of the file, giving a version number, compile date, compatability information,
and other interesting tidbits that no one will read until they've spent
ten hours crashing, debugging, and relinking...  ;-)