[massysett]

The illegality of littering reflects a political consensus that littering is undesirable.

Since non-PVP uploads are allowed despite the technical ease of banning them, this reflects the fact that the PVP purists do not have a consensus backing their view.

[dllthomas]

I think the political consensus arose because of a recognition of certain attributes of littering, which would not go away simply because the political consensus moved. There was a time before littering was illegal.

[massysett]

Exactly. There is no agreement in the Haskell community that lack of strict adherence to PVP bounds has negative attributes. Because there is no such agreement, Hackage does not enforce PVP compliance.

[dllthomas]

But using that to reason about "wrongness" still seems backwards.

"This is bad in a way similar to how littering is bad, therefore it should be discouraged (and maybe banned) like littering is discouraged and banned." is a perfectly reasonable form of argument. "But it's not banned like littering is banned!" is not a good objection.

It is, of course, possible that it's not actually bad like littering is bad, or that other concerns genuinely override... but that doesn't make this particular objection appropriate.