I also am afraid of 'automatic installation' tools. Like jbruger I prefer to exercise (a modicum) of control over what gets installed on my machines. It's not that I don't trust my User community, I can't. I am the 'responsible party' when the SEC auditors come through, and I don't want to have to explain what package Xyz::IOwn::TheWorld is doing on a (supposedly) secure server that happens to be handling credit-card data. I am willing to install what the user wants/needs (within reason), when asked, but I do need to have a piece of paper for the files.

And the other side of that coin is the tyographical error problem: The number of times I type "use warnigns;" is legion. With 'auto-install of package on use failure', then every time I typoed, Perl would have to take time out to search CPAN, determine that the module didn't exist, and report back; I'd get a lot grayer waiting. I'd be sorely tempted to build my own pragmas (with the appropriate mis-spelled name) to get around it. That would get to be both a maintenance headache and a distribution nightmare. I much prefer the current polite error message followed by a quick exit, stage left.