We got a suggestion from @dridi on the list to separate the mod_php package to remove the dependency of httpd on php:

However, I'm not here to complain, I have one candidate for you: php
currently requires httpd, probably because of mod_php coming from the
same upstream. I didn't study the php packaging but I suspect mod_php
could become its own package so that setting up nginx+php-fpm doesn't
force you to also bring down the httpd stack.

This is probably worthy of a formal f32 self-conatined change, keeping
end-users in mind. This dead weight is not critical for me, but I
believe it is worthy of your minimization effort even though none of
the aforementioned packages are part of the base image. I will not
engage with the minimization effort beyond sending the occasional
suggestion like today, because I don't have the bandwidth (pun
intended) to follow your work closely.