rpm -q --whatrequires vixie-cron tells me that modutils-2.3.9-6 requires it. IMHO, that is bad - it ties users to one particular cron implementation. I encountered this while trying to install dillon-cron on my system. It would be nice if vixie-cron provided a virtual package like sendmail/apache etc. do, and other packages used that one. On second thoughts, why does modutils require a cron daemon at all? None of the other packages that put files in /etc/cron.* directories has this requirement (and there are six of them in total on my minimal RHL 6.2 installation).
Having a crond is compulsary for auto-removal of unused kernel modules (the kmod cron job). But I agree that there should be a virtual package "crond".
We may add a virtual package if we ship a different cron daemon anywhere. In any case, the requirement is not going away unless the cron script does.
Agreed, but having a cron daemon is also compulsory for tmpwatch etc. but they don't have this additional dependency. And anyway, they needn't be tied to one particular cron implementation.