I understand wanting to update TeX, but this seems like a step backward. The current texmf iso, though old, provides LaTeX and most of the common formatting packages. It seems like this bare-bones version would be less functional than what's already available. In particular, I expect that most of the people who need TeX need it because its use is being externally imposed on them, and those cases are almost always LaTeX, not TeX.
Russ
