> packages are supposed to be nodes in a dependency graph (or better, partial order), and there are nice composition rules. But one the nodes themselves represent graph/order closures (or almost-closure) we use that nice property.
A) "Lose", not "use", right?
B) Sounds like a lot of gobbledy-gook... Who cares about this?
C) Why should I?
> People that are very application oriented tend to like vendoring --- "my application is its own island, who gives a shit".
No, people that are very application oriented tend to like applications that work without a lot of faffing around with "dependencies" and shit they may not even know what it means.
> But the distro's point isn't just gather the software --- that's an anachronism --- but plan a coherent whole.
A) Sez who?
B) Seems to me it would be both easier and more robust to build "a coherent whole" from bits that each work on their own than from ones that depend on each other and further other ones in some (huge bunch of) complex relationship(s).
> And applications who only care about themselves are terrible for that.
As per point B) above, seems to me it's exactly the other way around.
> The larger point is free and open source software really should be library-first.
Again, sez who?
> Siloed Applicationns are a terrible UI
WTF does the UI have to do with anything?
> and holdover from the economics of proprietary shrink-wrapped software
[Citation needed]
> which itself is a skeuomorphism from the physical world of nonreplicable goods.
Shrink-wrapped diskettes or CDs are physical goods, so they can't be skeumorphic.