I can see both sides here. I have 10.x.x.x hosts myself, and its
often simplest to just dump them into /etc/hosts.

OTOH, the default on BSD systems has been documented for a *long*
time, and I have a lot of sympathy with Todd Vierling's argument there.

I've also been through two whole-domain IP-address transitions, at
different sites; there, searching /etc/hosts first (and having stale
entries for other than the local interfaces) is an utter PITA.

Smart users can always change the nsswitch defaults. I think "least
surprise" says we should avoid changing the historic BSD defaults even
if we *do* document it in NetBSD's INSTALL guide. 

There really are technical arguments both ways. So changing the
historic default doesnt make sense unless, there's a super-majority
consensus for the change.  (That's what I meant to say earlier;
apologies to anyone who took it otherwise or as a flame).

Now that Luke has added a clean mechanism which allows setting the
historic defaults on each database, and knowledgeable users can tailor
maybe everyone can rest happily.

And if someone were to add hooks to sysinst to create either
flavour of nsswitch.conf, we could forget all about this.