add namespaces for the conda ecosystem?

[bollwyvl]

Hi folks, and thanks for the OSSIndex.

We just packaged jake for conda-forge, but then immediately found that it only pulls from (presumably) repo.anaconda.com. Or something.

For the last few years, conda-forge has been the upstream of those packages, which are increasingly complicated to use by Anaconda, Inc's terms of service. In addition, conda-forge provides about 5x as many packages (including large numbers from msys and cran) and releases far more frequently.

The conda-forge packages have canonical releases as both GitHub releases (it's just really big, but the API works fine) as well as distribution through anaconda.org.

As it appears other ecosystems were able to have namespaces added, e.g. npm, it seems like it should be possible, and would be greatly appreciated by the conda community, to also add these for the conda ecosystem: aside from conda-forge, number of other channels are very important to their respective communities, including bioconda, pytorch, etc.

We've also got this isssue to discuss how we might use this, such as helping gate the introduction of new packages (and their dependencies) through the extensive automation process provided by conda-forge.

Thanks again!