For me, on Windows, the biggest negative aspect of eggs is when people provide binary installations (ones with compiled C extensions) in eggs only. I prefer bdist_wininst/bdist_msi installers, and with compiled code, I can't always build from source (complex library dependencies, etc). So, given that an egg already has everything that is needed at runtime, how easy would it be to create a tool which converted an egg into a bdist_wininst installer? With that, I could happily forget about eggs. Paul. PS I am assuming that "eggs are only a packaging format" - and that all of the setuptools goodies like namespace support, entry points etc, that some projects benefit from, would still work whether the package was an egg or a conventionally-installed bdist_wininst...