[Catalog-sig] RFC: pypan - a Python package manager

[David Ascher]

Suchandra Thapa wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 14:55, Thomas Heller wrote:
> 
> /The chicken and egg issue. It's difficult to reach the critical mass///
> /where the system is actually used.///
> 
> It might be useful to see how CPAN got started. 

The standard perl way.  A huge amount of energy, a lot of people actively 
working together, and a lack of fear of hacks.  CPAN is nothing but a replicated 
FTP server w/ a bit of authentication and a lot of library science =).  There's 
almost 0 meta-data, no distribution model.  It was also started at a time when 
there were no alternatives -- only a few people had access to permanent ftp 
sites or web sites from which to publish.

--david