Sounds like an absolute nightmare.
- Requires a network (currently I can extract sets on another machine without a network interface).
- Requires remote authentication (otherwise a malicious attacker could target my machines address and format my drives).
- Requires 4gb ram to boot (does that sound like a bad use of resources to anyone else?)
- Looks difficult to configure, what happens when I need to drop into a shell because the installer is not flexible enough?
- If for some reason it fails (which it will) I still need to drop into a shell, except now I have more barriers to do so.
A far better installer would be a simple shell with two options: Novice and Expert. Novice will default all settings so new users just have to press enter, type in a keymap and fill in a username and password and they're up and running within minutes with sane defaults. Expert would allow manual partitioning, messing around with security hardening etc. When the project switches to pkgbase optionally there could be a prompt to install third party software, providing a simple dialog interface to browse the ports tree and select any packages of interest, or to skip that and stick with the base system.
That installer prototype is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion!