a place for configuration files

[Andrzej Cuber]

Hello Everyone,

for the last 5 years I was using Red Hat and Fedora Core Linuxes.
With the beginning of the current year I installed FreeBSD Release 6 on one of my servers.
It took me about a week to setup the system but I am very happy with it now.

I build most of the stuff from the sources using ports.
What I found strange is that the configuration files of different services are located in 
two different places. Most configuration which was installed from the CD is located at 
/etc but everything what I built from sources is located at /usr/local/etc. Maybe this is 
  the way it use to be on Unix based systems.

In RedHat and Fedora distributions all configuration files are located at /etc.
I am very new to FreeBSD but I found it difficult. After installing desired package I have 
to add it to /etc/rc.conf in order to start it as a service and then I have to look for 
configuration folder in /usr/local/etc.

Is there any reason why the configuration files are placed in those different locations?

-- 
pozdrawiam / best regards
Andrzej Cuber
+48 504 271-977