Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Yeah, yeah another package management utility for the fray. RPM and Deb both work and work pretty well (I am an RPM fan, its not ideal, but you gotta give it props for working) but a universally adopted system would be great, wouldnt it?

Well, there is some speculation as to why multiple package managers exist and whom would adopt what even if a "better" way existed (the proprietary folks, like admittedly RedHat, seem to like it the proprietary way, even on the free and open source Linux distro they sell, hmmmm), but we can all probably agree a standard would help the user community.

Enter SPK, the Simple Packaging Kit. SPK is combination of an XML configuration file and needed data in a compressed format. Sounds simple right, well, yep it is, but simple is great in my book. I have not yet tried SPK, and there are some issues (as elaborated upon in the linked freshmeat editorial) but it does seem like a fantastic concept.

Checkit, try it, and or pitch in, see the linked freshmeat editorial for more info.

UPDATE: According to the creators most if not all of the aforementioned "issues" with SPK have been resolved and it is now even better. Do yourself a favor and give it a try.

Also note that there is a good deal more information about it on the linked SPK home page, however, the freshmeat editorial is not longer available (as far as I can tell, the current link breaks and searching on freshmeat yields nothing.)
  SDK editorial