I disagree. Tying to keep some sort stability to the distributions, such as how their created and how their installed, as well as where to get them from and how to distiguish one type of install from another, is prefectly reasonable. By creating a mish-mash of everything, which is what is slowly happening at the moment, perhaps is sliding toward insanity.

However, I don't think it unreasonable to try and promote the idea that there are few different ways of installing Perl distributions. Underneath they are the same distribution, it's just that for some, they only know PPM, others use CPAN/CPANPLUS, etc... Afterall isn't Perl about having more than one way to do it? All I'm trying to suggest, is perhaps we ought to think about formalising some of the messages we are giving out to people on where to get Perl distributions and how to install them.