You could go farther and use a DNS name as a group name, then publish packages by signing with the SSL key. Anyone who doesn't want to shell out for a domain name could use a registry service that gives subdomains out. Why reinvent the governance wheel?
Their stance seems pretty reasonable though I'm not sure I would have done the same (and it's obviously very likely I would be wrong to do the opposite of what they did):
> Namespacing
> In the first month with crates.io 58, a number of people have asked us aboutthe possibility of introducing namespaced packages 90.
> While namespaced packages allow multiple authors to use a single, generic name, they add complexity to how packaged are referenced in Rust code and in human communication about packages. At first glance, they allow multiple authors to claim names like http, but that simply means that people will need to refer to those packages as wycats' http or reem's http, offering little benefit over package names like wycats-http or reem-http.
> When we looked at package ecosystems without namespacing, we found that people tended to go with more creative names (like nokogiri instead of “tenderlove’s libxml2”). These creative names tend to be short and memorable, in part because of the lack of any hierarchy. They make it easier to communicate concisely and unambiguously about packages. They create exciting brands. And we’ve seen the success of several 10,000+ package ecosystems like NPM and RubyGems whose communities are prospering within a single namespace.
> In short, we don’t think the Cargo ecosystem would be better off if Piston chose a name like bvssvni/game-engine (allowing other users to choose wycats/game-engine) instead of simply piston.
> Because namespaces are strictly more complicated in a number of ways,and because they can be added compatibly in the future should they become necessary, we’re going to stick with a single shared namespace.
