If everything is to end up in /usr, then I'd argue that this makes /usr superfluous. If merging is to be done, then IMO things should be moved out of /usr, not moved in.
well no the point is to have a single top-level directory for a single purpose. so distribution provided files will go to /usr, local-system configuration in /etc, /run is for runtime state, /var is the local-system state (the non-ephemeral state). Let me paste this here: » The merged directory /usr, containing almost the entire vendor-supplied operating system resources, offers us a number of new features regarding OS snapshotting and options for enterprise environments for network sharing or running multiple guests on one host. Most of this is much harder to accomplish, or even impossible, with the current arbitrary split of tools across multiple directories. With all vendor-supplied OS resources in a single directory /usr they may be shared atomically, snapshots of them become atomic, and the file system may be made read-only as a single unit. « Well, /opt would have to go soon, too -- дамјан