[zardeh]

Well, you could also solve it by saying that the post slash names are unique. ie. There can't exist zardeh/serde if erickt/serde already exists. Then the author-name works as a logical checksum, and you aren't any worse off than you were with a global namespace.

[kibwen]

The purpose of a namespace is to make it possible to disambiguate two otherwise identical identifiers. If you force package names to be unique across all namespaces, then you don't have namespaces at all, you just have a single global namespace where you're forced to prepend an author name to the package name.

[zardeh]

I know, I wasn't suggesting this as a namespacing solution, but instead a typo-prevention one.

[tatterdemalion]

That reduces the likelihood of success (erick-t/srede requires 2 typos) but doesn't eliminate the possibility.

[zardeh]

True, but two simultaneous and specific typos is much, much less likely than a single one.