Why has this mod been marked as deprecated? Did I miss a news post, that this has been integrated into the base game?

Thanks!

Ditto, I need this!

Maybe it's because the mod author is not "available" anymore? (Last seen on the Forums on 8 August 2018.)
Anyway, you should still be able to download and use the mod...
P.S.: Yeah, from https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-250
"A modder can mark a mod as deprecated, which indicates they are no longer updating or maintaining it."

there should be two levels of "deprecation", one for mods like this that are no longer actively maintained by the author but still work perfectly fine (probably until 0.17 breaks almost all mods) and one for mods that no longer work, are buggy, or are no longer needed because their functionality is now available in vanilla or in other mods.

as i have been told, the portal api won't list deprecated mods unless you ask it for the exact name of the mod. thus not only the really old/buggy mods can't be automatically found and listed, but also those "still working but not maintained" mods. this applies eg for mod-managers and other utilities (like "ModMyFactory").

there are people who use older versions of factorio (either older sub-versions of the current version, or really old versions like 0.12 or 0.13) and who thus need old versions of mods (including those which are deprecated because their functionality is now included in vanilla). with the current handling of deprecated mods, it's difficult to find such mods automatically in a mod-manager.

I apologize for inconveniences. Mod portal suddenly made mandatory to have steam account with Factorio linked to this site otherwise it marks all mods deprecated. And guess what - it did not notify mod developers.

Anyway, everything should be sorted out now, including update for 0.17.

WTF!? Are you absolutely certain that Steam account linking is mandatory ? (And not just Factorio account...)

Correct, it asks for Factorio account. In my case it happens to be on Steam.

Well, that's not the same... some people also got it from the official website or GoG.
I'm surprised though - you need a Factorio account to download mods, but you didn't need one before to upload them ?!
Also, in case that you haven't seen it :
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-250

Aha, you could freely upload/download mods before, it required only registration on mod portal. Looks like when this Deprecation feature has been introduced they also made is so you have to verify that you actually have a game bought somewhere. I would understand if I just could not use this site until I do so, but automatically deprecating all user's mods and excluding them from search was a surprise.