[PD] PD and externals, questions and compressions

I have two questions to ask with this email: one general, and the other specific.

One: What dictates which externels get included in the pd OFFICAL release? For example pd has netsend and netrecieve, but I saw that somebody said that OSC is used for that as well; who decides when OSC does this better than netsend and netrecieve? I have no idea of what OSC is, im just using that as an example.

Two: Im thinking of writing a compressor~ external as I dont have one for linux, and the windows one i have no idea how to use, and it seems pritty simplistic. I was going to write one that uses nurbs to make the curve. Is there a linux compressor object already written somewhere? (So I dont have to re-invent the wheel...)

Thanks, -thewade