Fred Wright wrote:

> 2) At one time, the FreeBSD kernel did *not* have this restriction.  One
> wonders if the change was made intentionally or as an accident that was
> then "fixed" in the documentation. :-)

It was an operational restriction, which is now enforced.  It
wasn't an accident.

> 3) Lying about the netmask (which is what this amounts to) may confuse
> something else...

It really doesn't.  The local host has a route to these addresses,
and ARP functions properly.

There was a complete discussion of this some years ago on the
freebsd lists, perhaps it's archived.