I hope this helps with the adoption of newer versions of packages. I have used MacPorts in the past (and Fink before) but I am supper happy with Homebrew these days. What I disliked about Macports was:

1. Ports define which compiler to use. Sometimes I had to install a small tool and first it would another version of gcc. 2. Ports were outdated a lot. I developed a project using the Grails-framework and it was a couple of versions behind the current stable release. Just checked: Grails port is at version 2.2 https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/devel/grails/... while the current version being 3.1.10

With Homebrew the adoption rate seems much higher. Also you don't depend on a single maintainer.