>On the nontechnical side, it seems that PAM is beginning to become a
>de-facto standard.  I'm not sure how much weight should be given to
>that; if we go for "de-facto standard", we should just support Windows
>DLLs and be done with it.  One of the things NetBSD is about, as I
>understand it, is technical excellence.

We're also trying to be standards-based, IIRC.  I still think following
even de-facto standards has merit; people are starting to write 3rd
party code that uses PAM.  Making things easier to port to NetBSD
raises the acceptance level of NetBSD, which is a Good Thing IMHO.
This shouldn't be our _primary_ criteria, but it should still be one
of them.

>> [PAM] certainly simplifies a lot of development for portable
>> applications.
>
>How?  Building shared objects is system-specific magic on every system
>I know of that has them....

I think this person was talking about a common API.  I'd rather add
system-specific shared object magic to a program's Makefiles than
write to a whole new API.

--Ken