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Python needs something like CPAN. Python has Cheese Shop (now called PyPi). It's just a link farm; it doesn't host the modules. Nor does it have any useful curation. So there's no quality control, and no way to fix anything short of forking a new version.

That's the big advantage of CPAN. CPAN is the de facto owner of the modules in CPAN, and those modules can be maintained.

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> That's the big advantage of CPAN. CPAN is the de facto owner of the modules in CPAN, and those modules can be maintained.

This is just false. The CPAN maintainers (really PAUSE maintainers) can transfer ownership of modules away from totally AWOL owners, but it's not like this happens all the time.

There's plenty of bitrot on CPAN because the original owner went AWOL and no one else has been motivated enough to ask to take the module over. There is no "CPAN group" who maintains modules.

Well ... there is ether.

No, but at PyPi, nothing gets maintained, just replaced. There are about five modules for parsing RFC3339/ISO8601 dates (the format that appears in every email) and they're all broken, but in different ways.

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