> Yes, CPAN provides a utility in the ecosystem, but most users do not use the extra features that CPAN provides over something like PyPi.
How do you know that?
In short, you're arguing against the long tail...
Let me add also mine anecdotal experience from yesterday:
I looked for a good SQL parser/evaluator in Python (which I partly use at work). There might be one, but I didn't find any. It is easy to find on CPAN. (And this is hardly an unusual request.)
It doesn't matter how competant your product is (CPAN) if you aren't delivering what the market wants.
Yes, CPAN provides a utility in the ecosystem, but most users do not use the extra features that CPAN provides over something like PyPi.
And even in the cases where there is a feature overlap (e.g. repository storage and breath), after a certain point things are "good enough" and theres a marginal return for adding more.
Does it matter if there are 17 SHA1 implementations on CPAN and 3 on PyPi? Not really, since you only need 1 good implementation. In fact it could be argued that having more implementations is worse due to paradox of choice.