It's unclear, however, who is using base packages besides mx.* and ll.*, although I'd guess from the PyPI listings that perhaps Django is. (It seems that "base" packages are more likely to use a 'base-extension' naming pattern, vs. the 'namespace.project' pattern used by "pure" packages.)
I'll stress it again in case you missed it the first time: I think the main reason people use "pure namespace" versus "base namespace" packages is because hardly anyone know how to do the latter, not because there is no desire to do so!
I, for one, have been trying to figure out how to do "base namespace" packages for years...
You mean, without PEP 382? That won't be possible, unless you can coordinate all addon packages. Base packages are a feature solely of PEP 382. Regards, Martin