Random groups is by no means a dead format. Following the lead of the
FITS community I added to AIPS the ability to write interferometer
visibility data using binary table format instead. I believe that
none of the other major interferometry packages (casa, difmap, miriad,
etc) can read data written this way. They all read data written in
the random groups format and future plans seem to be more of the
same.

If random groups are deprecated to the point of being illegal, then
the portion of astronomy which created FITS in the first place will be
left out of the FITS community.

Eric Greisen