[noselasd]

Indeed. e.g. ntpd has support for quite a lot of different hardware - which is important, someone must be a stratum 1 server.

[nullc]

Stratum 1 support doesn't require a lot of different hardware, arguably it requires less: you need only a PPS device; which has become increasingly generic due to the kernel support needed for precise timestamping. (okay sure, you also need to initially name the second, but you can have another NTP server do that).

[vidarh]

But perhaps it does not make sense for all of these to considerations to be taken care of by a single package.

E.g. perhaps it makes sense to have an entirely separately client-only package with a separate codebase.

[gpvos]

That is exactly what PHK plans to do with ntimed: split it up into separate packages for clients, time distribution servers and authoritative time transmitters.