You’re quoting me out of context. If deterministic by default had no cost associated with it, it would clearly be the desirable choice. But it has a cost associated with it, so this is less clear.
am i right to assume here that the costs we are talking about is merely adding markers to those few already existing defsystem's that depend on leakage, or depend on non-portable (read: random) defaults?
because that "it has a cost associated with it" above sounds like some serious pain...
If I failed to convince you that this is the case, and that other people may have other preferences, then I apologize.
reading from this side of the screen your preference seems to be to have change in what you like (new goodies coming from qicklisp), but not in what you don't like (the primary build infrastructure of the entire "community" maturing into something useful).