Namespaces won't solve the problem. If you have namespaces/packages you can have foo:c-mode and bar:c-mode. But if you're always using the qualified names, the

Namespaces won't solve the problem. If you have namespaces/packages you can have foo:c-mode and bar:c-mode. But if you're always using the qualified names, they are not better than just prefixes like foo-c-mode and bar-c-mode. The point of packages is that you can set up a context where you can just use c-mode, which is one of those two: either foo:c-mode or bar:c-mode. Somehow that selection has to be made, and there it's possible to continue to have arguments and drama: which one should be the default one in a vanilla installation? Or do we barrage the user with a flurry of questions to resolve each such a conflict? When the installation is complete, and the user opens a .c or .cc file, it has to be handled by a mode which is chosen somehow from among the alternatives.