The standard library is where modules go to die, just like in Python. And unlike Python, there's a good build/dependency manager available for Scala (Maven). Keep that stuff out of the core language, let it be libraries released on their own schedules.
JSON has a standardized spec and the API you design has to do a few things: Marshal and unmarshal.
How frequently do these need to change?
The problem with the library landscape is that one library will be promoted by the purists and another by the company with the money. Suddenly you have to learn both to understand Scala codebases.
Well literally today I got a notification from GitHub that I need to upgrade the version of jackson-databind that one of my project depends on because of a security vulnerability. And apparently that's the 8th such fix to this patch version of jackson-databind.
