Current DESCRIPTION for net-misc/netdate says: "A Utility to synchronize the time with ntp-servers", but that application does not actually communicate via ntp protocol. Also, it seems that on nowadays systems (more secured, less running external services), this utility is almost useless.
netdate(8): netdate - set date and time by ARPA Internet RFC 868
actually this program does do udp by default, not tcp. a symlink to it called "rdate" does do tcp protocol by default. either way, I agree, please change that description so no more ntp is being mentioned! instead it should mention the more likely known "rdate" since that's the program provided by this package, if you manually create that symlink! so my suggestion is to change the eBuild to create this missing symlink if it hasn't been provided by another program, and best would be to allow other packages to overwrite it or block them. there are net-misc/openrdate and net-misc/rdate currently if you search for rdate... this program could become more useful if it got executed at startup after the network is established. so maybe during installation some message should point that out and additionally say you need to enable some (non-ntp) timeservers in your network too (i.e. configure xinetd.d/time)? maybe also unify configuration for this program and the other rdate clones? maybe suggest some timeservers available over the internet? in other words, this program is lacking much more than merely a fitting package-description!
