> Now, if it's something that a standard mandates, then i understand the
> rationale, but I don't know if it should be done for our make(1) without
> .POSIX: being set in the appropriate Makefile.

That wouldn't be such a simple change. Right now all the MAKEFLAGS
processing (that we are talking about) happens before any makefiles
are read.  But it could be done... 

> (XCU5 says that MAKEFLAGS should be automatically incorporated into make's
> option list if set in the environment, as well.  So if implemented properly,
> ${MAKE} doesn't even need to propagate options.)

Yes, there certainly seems to be some redundancy there.

--sjg