The suggestion wasn't to rename it, but to move it from base to haskell98.

Then you could add these functions without changing the interface of any of the modules listed in the FFI Addendum.

That would amount to saying that 'Foreign' isn't a hierarchical library any more, and anyone wishing to use purely hirerarchical libraries in their code should avoid it. On one hand, this looks reasonable: Foreign already doesn't re-export Foreign.C. However, I do use it all the time. So if we ever decided to allow disabling of the haskell98 package, lots of supposedly purely-hierarchical code would break. Ho hum. Cheers, Simon