with the advent of perl 5.10, using sha256 for digests has become less of a headache.
Consequently, the pkg_* tools in current have just been switched to not care: they can now either recognize md5 hex checksums, or sha256 base64 checksums. At some point in the near future, pkg_create will start creating sha256 checksums (probably in a month or so). At that point, if you haven't updated your tools, you will no longer be able to install -current packages. Note that people using PLIST_DB in -current must update now, since the register-plist script was updated to keep in synch with the pkg_* tools... Everything was done carefully to avoid inconveniencing users. If you compile your own packages, you probably have enough hints with this message to keep things working. If you don't understand, maybe you're better off using binary packages... ;-)
