I agree of course that a decentralized system is technically superior to a centralized one. It must be, because as you pointed out, strong consensus in the netw

I agree of course that a decentralized system is technically superior to a centralized one. It must be, because as you pointed out, strong consensus in the network about a particular node makes it indistinguishable from a 'central' node in a centralized system. However, when it comes to package management I think we should look at the community first, technology second. The first concern is to set up a central node that everyone can safely mirror and is pretty much guaranteed to be there. Otherwise, what's the point? If I can't trust a package repository to store a package for a decade or so, why even use one? What's lovely about CPAN and friends is that they are reliable. They're always there. Of course I can just host a node myself for the next 10 years, but that doesn't make everythingstays a good alternative to npm. If all we're doing is decentralizing packages with the assumption that people will host their own stuff, this could be implemented with BitTorrent plus a text file containing magnet links.