The reality is that it wasn't corporate scripts hidden away from the public eye. There were some nightmare van Smoorenberg rc scripts in the likes of Debian.

The reality is that it wasn't corporate scripts hidden away from the public eye. There were some nightmare van Smoorenberg rc scripts in the likes of Debian. FreeBSD has Mewburn rc not van Smoorenberg rc and was thus inherently better in this regard until the middle of 2014 (https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/480897/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/480897/5132). But even FreeBSD has some large rc scripts, particularly in the networking and the HID parts such as Bluetooth and configuring all attached keyboards; albeit that the FreeBSD style guidelines mean that they are more legible than the nightmare Debian (et al.) ones.