Remove BIND, Sendmail, Perl and etc from base?

[Richard Coleman]

should the packaging system be completely contained in the base system?
i don't think this is a good solution. see freebsd's mess: pkg_add is in
base, so you can't dynamically change the packaging format because of
legacy users.
having e.g. python as a must-have for ports is a big deal, however. perl
is still in base, but how long?
pure shell scripts do the job very well too. (portage's ebuilds are
nothing but bash scripts). use default shell functions etc and you're
done VERY cheap. and shell is always there[tm].
I've always wished that the various OS'es should just pick a "standard" 
scripting language, put in the base, and then use the hell out of it. Of 
course, this turns into nasty religous battles, since each group thinks 
their favorite scripting language (perl/tcl/python/ruby/gawk/icon/etc) 
should be the one.  The reality is that is doesn't really matter.  Any 
of these would suffice for the types of scripts I'm talking about 
(package system, adduser scripts, cleanups jobs in /etc/periodic, etc.). 
 Instead, because no group wants to tackle this religous battle, we end 
up with scripts in 5 difference scripting languages.  And none of them 
gets leveraged to the degree they should.

Richard Coleman