David,

You're missing my point. You proposed enforcing a *fixed* limit of
1024 files per process.

> >The per-process 'hard' limit should be a fixed number.... say 1024.

No, it bloody well should not.

That value is way too low for certain applications.  One of the *nice*
things about *BSD (as opposed, to say, Linux) is that such limits are
not hard-to-find compile-time constants.

Suggesting that we take NetBSD in that direction isn't going to get a
pleasant reception.