The concept of an "Essential" package seems to exist for something so common that no package should have to declare a dependency on it.
However, over the years, "Essential" has made it difficult to reduce installation size, to reduce chroot/container size, or to coordinate various transitions. Removing something from the Essential set requires tracking down every package using it to add a dependency, carefully managing a transition across Debian releases, and risking third-party breakage. Leaving aside the *existing* Essential packages, or any packages they might transition into, is there a good rationale to allow *new* Essential packages? Would it be reasonable for Policy to have guidance suggesting that we should not introduce new Essential packages, and that packages should use Depends or Pre-Depends as appropriate instead? Any such guidance could make an exception for all existing Essential packages, as well as for new packages introduced to transition from existing Essential packages. (This policy shouldn't, for instance, prevent Essential packages from splitting or combining.) Does this seem reasonable? - Josh Triplett