To me that change seems wrong idea, I'm afraid. As you said in the other mail, "MacPorts philosophy has always been to build its own versions of software, and not use any versions Apple may already have installed with the OS" If so, why don't you use MacPorts's one by default?
By "by default" do you mean "when you use the +apache variant"? If so, I agree with you, from the other thread you quoted. However, I wanted to note that this seems to be a completely separate issue from the one you originally mentioned.
There are a few exceptions to the rule, as with most rules, but I think they are few. Perhaps we should state them in the FAQ as well to eliminate the confusion. X11 Apache NET-SNMP gcc These are the major ones that come to my mind. What ones have I missed? Except for Apache, the reasons for treating them as exceptions are mostly practical concerns. For Apache, the exception is apparently maintained because of popular demand it be an exception. Even a few highly tech savvy folks object to replacing it for some reason. Mark