http://drupal.org/node/77549

I am not going to re-hash everything I said there, but I need to say that install profiles as they are now are not really adequate
for many of the things we hope to accomplish with them.

I have been building install profiles in one manner or another for 2 years now, and that patch is part of what I found were the base
requirements of making install profiles work for us, and very likely anybody who runs more than 1 site on an install.