esound, removal removes 478 packages !

[stan]

Hi,

Because esd grabs the sound device and won't let applications use alsa 
calls directly I wanted to remove it from my system.  There are 478 
packages to remove. 

Will the new version of Fedora be using esound exclusively?  What about 
if I want fine control of the hardware?  How is that done using esound?

Should I open a bugzilla against esound because it won't let me use alsa 
calls to restrict the sound card to hardware supported rates, or is that 
futile given the huge dependencies on esound?

Is there a fork from alsa occurring?  Is OSS being revived?

Thanks for any clarification.