It's this sort of stuff that relegates BSD behind Linux in so many shops. Ask anyone who used UNIX for years what one of the biggest reasons for installing a BSD or a Linux would be and you will quite often hear "it comes with all of the stuff it took hours to install on Solaris
or HP-UX or AIX or whatever..". Now the BSD people are going and shooting that in the foot. Making Perl a second class citizen in their centrally-managed system is just lame. Yes, I know it will be easy to install it. No, I don't have any problem with it being optional. But it certainly should be standard and not relegated to ports.
<FLAME> If BSD people designed bicycles, would the reflectors be optional? If BSD people designed cars, would the trunk be optional? Oh, nobody will mind cutting a hole in the back of the car to store stuff if they need to. And it'll be so much easier to make cars without standard trunks. </FLAME>
I love RPM's, particularly with apt. And my OS vendor is in touch with real world.