authinfo gnutls netrc.el auth-sources & smtpmail-starttls-credentials

[MON KEY]

use of .authinfo.gpg implies auth-sources.el (or will soon)
auth-sources wants netrc.el per `auth-source-user-or-password'
netrc.el defines a var `netrc-services' that is hard bound to "/etc/services"

How is this going to remain secure/stable/reliable across platforms -
esp. going forward in lieu of emerging and recent new functionality
with auth-sources, epa, epg?

If netrc.el wants to hardwire the `netrc-services-file' he should be
mindful that not all systems have this path available - maybe a
defcustom is in order here?

It doesn't look like this oversight can pose an immediate problem
because where the `/etc/services' is missing netrc.el just ignores the
void... and quietly proceeds - still... is that a _good_ thing?

Why not just inline the entirety of /etc/services's  '("protocol"
"port" "comment") list in netrc.el and/or include that list of triples
in `../emac/etc/services_subst' as a fallback for users/systems which
either lack the file and/or don't have read permission.

{... Backstory:  i just spent a day and a half debugging a Gnutls bug
on a Gnu/Linux system b/c of the recent 2.6.X RSA/DSA snafu before i
was able to uncover the reason i was getting funny smtp errors while
configuring Gnus.  That said, it wasn't a total loss as I was
subsequently able to get both GnuPG and Gnutls working out of the box
on a w32 system... with more or less current binaries,  having grabbed
the recent w32 2.8.x builds my second time around. Thanks Simon
Josefsson et al for the fresh binaries :) ...}

s_P