And, would you care strongly if it went away (or would you just migrate to something else)?
I would care strongly as I use it at home to limit inbound ssh to just the IP addresses of my work machine. Setting up IPtables is more complicated which can be read as "easier to get it wrong".
The question become, "Why get rid of it?" It is small works well and works the same across many flavors of UNIX. I have not looked recently, but I would guess that the source code does not change very often.
Just my 2cents.
Bob - Phoenix, AZ