The issue is one of process/collaboration/composition. Even at the largest of distros, package maintainers usually act with pseudo independence. They can change

The issue is one of process/collaboration/composition. Even at the largest of distros, package maintainers usually act with pseudo independence. They can change, QA, and push their packages basically at will. Images are collections of those pushes. Even with automation the aggregate nature of images makes them qualitatively different and---especially organizationally---provides a process challenge.