[Catalog-sig] What is the point of pythonpackages.com?

[Terry Reedy]

On 2/6/2012 8:17 PM, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>> The hosting-repository service was added later -- as a
>> convenience firstly to authors. I now believe that the repository should
>> have been and should be kept separate, as the Python Package Repository
>> -- PyPaR. Then repository issues would be clearly separate from index
>> issues.
...
> Anyway, if that had happened,

And I think it still should...

 > I think you would get people recommending
> that people put stuff both in the index and in the repository for the
> convenience of the users. And authors might want an integrated UI to
> manage things too. :)

Of course, uploading would mean being part of the index, just as today. 
But I would hope that such a separation would avert the calls to 
restrict the index. I think that would be destructive. If it were to 
occur, surely someone else would set a new index to Python packages that 
is at least as inclusive as PyPI is today.

Oh, and about PyPI download statistics, the original subject of this 
thread:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/numpy/1.6.1
says numpy1.6.1 has 50000 downloads since last July.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/?source=directory
says 9000 just last week. So counting only PyPI downloads gives an 
undercount by a factor of perhaps 5.

Or http://pypi.python.org/pypi/MySQL-python/1.2.3
275K downloads since 2010 July versus
http://sourceforge.net/directory/os:windows/?q=python
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python/?source=directory
115K downloads per week (down to 96K last week)

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy