Robert,

> Actually, I'd like to argue that the pkg system infrastructure is part
> of the base system and really should be there.

They were part of the base system, and we moved them out of there. This is 
because there are just too many problems trying to keep everything in sync 
when they are not logically grouped together. As a counter example, take a look at 
the FreeBSD ports collection, and see how many problems they run into whenever 
they introduce some new feature. This is one of the best changes that we ever 
made, IMO.

Alistair