Originally, this directory was meant to hold any custom fragments 
a package will need to add to the system initializer file,
"enterprise.init", in a file called "enterprise.init.in". When 
building a project, one of the steps to take was to run a task that 
concatenates all the appropriate fragments together into one master 
configuration file.

The enterprise.init file is gone and replaced by a newer
initialization system.
                    
The etc/ directory might also contain custom libraries or other 
special files a package relies on.