ports modifying system setups

[Chuck Robey]

I was wondering why ports apparently aren't allowed an obvious freedom, 
that of being able to set themselves to run as daemons.  A greate long 
time past, I seem to remember that there used to be a file 
/usr/local/etc/rc.local, which (if it existed) would be automatically 
sourced in at the end of rc.conf.  Ports which built daemons were 
allowed (well, actually, expected) to ask the user if they wished to 
activate the port, and if so, the port would add a line of the form 
'portname_enable="YES"', and this would make your new port operate. 
Well, it seems from what I see of my new system, that this is no longer 
the case.  I could understand (and approve of) ports not being allowed 
to modify any /etc/contents, but howcome ports can't use this rather 
obvious workaround?

I'm pretty sure this used to be allowed... and it seems like a good 
policy to me, from the number of non-technical folks who now run 
FreeBSD.  I just wanted to know why its not anymore.