Comment 1 for bug 408770

I understand your point. The compressed tar ball is not as small as it could be, but gziped files work better with automake and packages.

The gziped files are mostly PPDs. If PPDs are not gziped in the tar ball then they need to be gziped in a post-install hook. Post-install hooks don't work will at uninstall time because the file names have changed.

It is much cleaner to list gziped PPDs explicitly in the tar ball and let automake do the right thing with no post-install hooks.