Comment 1 for bug 526180

I've noticed the same thing. I'm wanting to install grub in Lucid, because grub2 is too enthusiastic about installing to the MBR when I've already got another Ubuntu install in another partition which uses grub. But when I install grub into Lucid, I still end up with grub2 because of this dependency.

I don't see why grub has grub-common as a dependency. It doesn't in Hardy, and yes, grub2 is an option even in the Hardy repositories.