Far too many people put far too much emphasis on finding the perfect package management system. In the real world, there are many different package management systems, and it would be impractical to impossible to abandon a vendor-supplied package management system in favor of another (would Red Hat, for instance, even consider supporting a "Red Hat Linux" system that didn't use RPM to manage software packages?).
Instead, we should be looking for a "meta"-package management system, a system that manages package management systems! We need an extensible system that can talk to all common package management systems and can provide a single interface to all common package management system functions (install, uninstall, list, check/verify, etc.).
In fact, I'm working on just such a system for my employer (whether I'll be able to release it as open source I haven't yet asked). I think such a system is possible, and preferable to trying to find a single, ultimate package management system. Such a system gives systems administrators great flexibility, and ensures that vendor standards aren't broken.
