There is one fundamental problem with both the SqueakMap and Universes model that has not been mentioned yet: It does not encourage participation. For a package author, maintaining a package entry is just an additional burden. And a package user cannot really do much about a broken package entry. 

Contrast that with the Trunk Model: One reason it works is that it takes almost zero effort to participate. You publish a fix to the inbox and announce that on squeak-dev. And it's very simple for a core developer to take it and commit to the trunk.

IMHO we need something similarly simple for a package management system for Squeak. Something where it is easy to share. If one user figures out how to get a particular package to load, it must be trivial to share that method. And submitting one such "package loading instruction" must not sign up the user to be perpetual maintainer of the package.

So I think the private "ownership" model is flawed. We need a package management system that allows easy contribution. Maybe SqueakMap can be restructured for this, but currently it seems heavily geared towards single maintainers.

- Bert -