1. Why are you not using apt/yum/insert-unix-package-manager-of-your-choice

Because we want and need to be cross-platform. However we do everything that we
can to talk these kind of existing tools so we can access and use the packages
they make available.

2. Then why don't you use a package manager such as that associated with Python
or Perl?

We thought heavily about this and we do heavily re-use (conceptually and
concretely) bits of the python setuptools system. However given the current
state of knowledge (content/data etc) packaging it was important to be able to:

a) 'install' (and access) material that was not explicitly packaged for those
systems (e.g. are just in a tar.gz file)

b) support attributes and functionality associated with data and content and
not necessarily present in systems focused on software.

