tail command

[bert]

tail: `-5' option is obsolete; use `-n 5' since this will be removed in the 
future

if this numeric option is removed, it will break compatibility with a
large number of scripts, it will also make it far more difficult to write
a script which works the same over older and newer systems..
some older os's do not support the -n option and removing the older
method from this command would mean that scripts intended to run on both
old and new systems would require a complex script to determine the
version of tail in use..
why is this option being removed?