[pkg-ntp-maintainers] Bug#514318: Considering the removal of ntpdate

[Peter Eisentraut]

As described in bug #514318 and elsewhere, the upstream NTP Project has 
deprecated the ntpdate program a long time ago, and it may be time to drop it 
from the Debian distribution.

Most of the functionality of ntpdate is now provided by ntpd (stepping the 
clock without threshold, stepping the clock and exiting without running the 
server).  The only exception that I'm aware of is that ntpd doesn't support 
the use of an outgoing unprivileged port (ntpdate -u).

On the other hand, ntpdate is not developed anymore and has lots of bugs and 
inconveniences, and more lightweight alternatives such as rdate are available 
now as well.

Nevertheless, since ntpdate used to be quite popular, I figured I'd better ask 
here for objections.