Is there anyone who builds inetutils without GNU make? I don't know, but if we want GNU inetutils to have a chance of being adopted, best not to put up additional barriers if they can be avoided. People do use BSD make, Solaris make, etc., to compile GNU utilities in general.
I wasn't suggesting that we add such dependencies, if people do use inetutils on obscure platforms than that is a immensly good thing! But it is also very useful to know what those platforms are, so that we can summarise what works, and worked.
