BuddyPress.org

@Mike Pratt

I think from a development perspective, it was easier to avoid the WP profile entirely, since it’s far too limited in what you can do with it. Like you can’t (in the DB) easily tell the WP profile screen which dynamic field type to use for each dynamic field. Since BuddyPress took the direction of being entirely theme based, it made sense to make a whole new profile with a more direct apprach to setting the fields and getting/updating the data.

For 1.3 there will be a more powerful xprofile system that makes for smarter fields.