Software installation opinions needed

[Frank P. Bresz]

In article <0706TQG at xds13.ferranti.com> peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>And to top it off, this on a system that already has one of the best
>automatic software installation systems I've ever seen.

Well it isn't necessarily one of the best I have ever seen.  However SUN
uses something called extract_unbundled (usually run as root).  To load
their add-on packages.  It does a fairly nice job.  The question I would
like to have answered is?  Does SUN encourage/support use of this script
by 3rd party vendors?  If not, why not?  If so why don't more people start
using it.  From what I can tell all it requires is write access into
/usr/tmp a fairly innocuous place.  Can anyone offer any details.