I agree that CGI.pm is generally not the best CGI module. But its main advantage is that comes pre-installed on the system because it is a core module.

I prefer to call that "standard module" and call modules that enable core functionality "core modules", like strict, warnings and File::Glob.

Anyway, it's not hard to deal with both, as interfaces are compatible:

# Fall back to CGI.pm if CGI::Simple is unavailable.
# We prefer CGI::Simple because it much lighter and faster.
my $cgi = 
    eval  { require CGI::Simple; CGI::Simple->new }
    || do { require CGI;         CGI        ->new };
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I do think avoiding CPAN modules is a bad idea.