freebsd-update: fetch or phttpget?

[Luca Ferrari]

Hi all,
I noted that freebsd-update uses phttpget as main downloader except in
a point, where fetch(1) is used:

fetch ${QUIETFLAG} http://${SERVERNAME}/${FETCHDIR}/latest.ssl

Now, this causes problems with the authentication when behind  a
proxy, since phttpget and fetch seem to use a different approach to
username/password authentication. In particular fetch handles an
http_proxy variable that includes username/password, while phttpget
does not.
What is the rationale behind the usage of two downloader within the same script?

Thanks,
Luca