Yeah, I don't know either. I went as far as to write spkg (spkg.megous.com) in 2006, just to replace the funcionality of pkgtools bash scripts without adding new features. (imporving robustness and speed) I never got any response from the Slackware team. I guess they're just very very conservative.

I loved my Slackware times for the learning experience. But it was hell of a lot of work to use it.