> but the only reason anyone needs a package manager is if they intend on having a complex web of dependencies and spreading an application's files all over the hierarchy.

Well, guess what? LibreOffice has a complex web of dependencies, and getting all those couple dozen dependencies patched, built, and then properly installed so the build system & compiler can find and use them is not trivial. If you've got a Haiku install, try installing LibreOffice; you'll see it brings about 20-30 packages with it!

> In other words, they're a UNIX system.

Haiku is a POSIX system, yes. Why is that an issue?

> Implementations are almost always reliant on a centrally managed appstore-like repository that developers have to deal with to distribute software in the "official" way

Well, Haiku packages can be installed without a repository. If all your package depends on are is base system itself, you can still ship it to users without a repository. Or you can run your own repository; it's quite easy to do, and multiple third-parties already are. Or you can submit recipes to HaikuPorts, which feeds the base "ports" repository, which multiple third-parties have also already done, in addition to our own proactive porting effort.

> often don't allow multiple concurrent instance of the same application to be install (different versions, for instance)

On Haiku, you can install packages in either `system` or in your local `home` directory, so you could have one version of the package in each of those. Or you could extract the package and run the app outside the package (if the app supports it; not all do.)

> are completely inflexible in regards to where applications are installed (so portability is right out), etc.

Indeed this is a common complaint, but as I noted above on Haiku you can install packages in `home`. Not sure what that has to do with portability, though?

> It appears that the developers disregarded these concerns because they like package management in Linux

We don't particularly like a number of aspects of package management in Linux, which is why we went with a very different solution than Linux did: packages are essentially filesystem images which are "mounted" into a pseudo-unionfs. That means installation/uninstallation time is virtually nothing, it's trivial to install packages in `home` as well as `system`, you can boot into old states, etc.

> Says a lot about the system then doesn't it? Windows has a portable LibreOffice, even Linux has an AppImage.

Windows has LibreOffice because everyone uses Windows, and so people are willing to put the time in to deal with having to patch and compile all LibreOffice's dependencies specially for Windows because there is no real "ports" tree for Windows.

AppImages are just 'packages' with all the dependencies in the package. You could make those for Haiku, too, if you wanted. The system package manager isn't stopping you. You could also install software the "old way" of unzipping archives and then copying them somewhere, we also aren't stopping that. This is a new paradigm that hopefully will replace the old ones, but it doesn't necessarily, not if people continue to use the old ways.

> Many of the problems I have with package managers were expressed by parts of the Haiku community when it introduced one.

And a good number of those users have come around on that as we've ironed out issues or made changes to accommodate their concerns.