Summary of responses on `Nuke the options?': 

Yes:

Felix Morley Finch <felix@crowfix.com>
Nathan Myers <ncm@cantrip.org>
Irving Wolfe <Irving_Wolfe@wolfe.net>
Craig Metz <cmetz@inner.net>
Alexander Kourakos <awk@bnt.com>
John Swinbank <john@swinbank.u-net.com>
Alexandros Manoussakis <alx@beryl.kapatel.gr>

No:

Guenther Leber <gleber@gams.at>
Dave Bodenstab <imdave@mcs.net>
Erik Soosalu <esoosalu@geocities.com>
Jonathan Marten <jonathan.marten@uk.Sun.COM>

Other:

Chris Hanson <cph@martigny.ai.mit.edu> thinks --smtphost can be useful,
but says the change won't affect him.

Matt Simmons <simmonmt@acm.org> didn't express a general opinion but wants 
-B/fetchlimit kept.

Steffen Opel <opel@rumpelkammer.uni-mannheim.de> makes a good argument
that --limit should be settable from the command line as a way to throttle
fetches according to day-night rates.

Comments:
	felix@crowfix.com:  "Using --fetchmailrc, someone could
write a Perl wrapper which would dummy up a temporary control file
using the soon-to-be-banned options, if someone really wanted such a
program."
	ncm@cantrip.org doesn't want fetchmailrc to require a control file.
	gleber@gams.at: "I like the flexibility I get from [command-line
options] and use it very often."
	awk@bnt.com: keep -u, -p, nuke the others.
	alx@beryl.kapatel.gr: keep -u, -p, -t, nuke the others.
	esoosalu@geocities.com: "I would have an objection to removing
command line options:  It makes it a lot harder to debug the inital setup."
	jonathan.marten@uk.Sun.COM: particularly (and not unreasonably)
objects to losing -r.

Alexandros Manoussakis <alx@beryl.kapatel.gr> offered the following summary:

It seems like many of us want to be able to use
fetchmail without the need of a .fetchmailrc file.
Regarding your list of commands to remove from
the command line, taking into account the feedback
regarding the matter we have (* denotes wanted options):

  -I, --interface   interface required specification
  -M, --monitor     monitor interface for activity
*  -p, --protocol    specify pop2, pop3, imap, apop, rpop, kpop, etrn
  -U, --uidl        force the use of UIDLs (pop3 only)
  -P, --port        TCP/IP service port to connect to
  -A, --auth        authentication type (password or kerberos)
  -E, --envelope    envelope address header
  -Q, --qvirtual    prefix to remove from local user id
*  -u, --username    specify users's login on server
  -n, --norewrite   don't rewrite header addresses
*  -l, --limit       don't fetch messages over given size
*  -K, --nokeep      delete new messages after retrieval
*  -S, --smtphost    set SMTP forwarding host
  -D, --smtpaddress set SMTP delivery domain to use
  -Z, --antispam,   set antispam response value
  -b, --batchlimit  set batch limit for SMTP connections
  -B, --fetchlimit  set fetch limit for server connections
  -e, --expunge     set max deletions between expunges
*  -r, --folder      specify remote folder name
*  -t, --timeout     server nonresponse timeout

Let's see how it goes and you can remove at least the options
no-one complains about!