[gpm] Why everyone is still using 1.20 instead of 1.99

[Poor Yorick]

Attempting to build gpm-1.99.7 resulted in the following error:

./bin/cinit.install.dir
make[1]: ./bin/cinit.install.dir: Command not found

Inspection of gpm2/Makefile yielded only the suspicion that 1.99.7, as
distributed, can't be built, since files such as the one in the error above
don't exist, either in source or executable form.  Previous posts by the author
of gpm encourage people to use the 1.99 series rather than the 1.20 series, but
the Linux distributions I checked are all sticking with the 1.20 series.  What
is the real scoop?  

-- 
Yorick