The real answer is I have. I'm a PyPI administrator now and have been enacting a lot of these benefits on PyPI itself. Just this weekend I've deployed a CDN in front of all of PyPI so that package downloads have sped up by 1-3 orders of magnitude depending on location.
Previously I had pushed hard for getting a real valid and trusted SSL certificate on PyPI, moving the user provided html/js from packages.python.org to pythonhosted.org in order to prevent CSRF fixation attacks.
Like I said Crate is an experiment. One that has enabled me to push for good changes in PyPI.
I think you're doing good work here, and I agree that PyPI is quite a bit of a mess. One little suggestion/question, though.
CPAN: Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
Rubygems: (self-explanatory)
PyPI: Python Package Index
Crate.io: Crate? Crate.io?
Nothing about the name or any part of the domain really mentions Python, or Python packages or libraries. It's not a bad name, but it doesn't really seem like a name for a large Python package index. What's the exact rationale behind the naming?
If it actually ends up replacing PyPI it could just live on the same domain as PyPi though (provided they are okay with that). But it needs a lot of work on the front end in order to be better :-), I like the backend fixes and speed improvements though.
The real answer is I have. I'm a PyPI administrator now and have been enacting a lot of these benefits on PyPI itself. Just this weekend I've deployed a CDN in front of all of PyPI so that package downloads have sped up by 1-3 orders of magnitude depending on location.
Previously I had pushed hard for getting a real valid and trusted SSL certificate on PyPI, moving the user provided html/js from packages.python.org to pythonhosted.org in order to prevent CSRF fixation attacks.
Like I said Crate is an experiment. One that has enabled me to push for good changes in PyPI.