[tehbeard]

That's.... I don't know how you even arrived at that idea of that being what happens? Are you imagining some kludged together perl script to hackily save the tarballs, written by someone who is then immediately let go?

What they're suggesting is basically setting up a cache for it locally in-between them and the "main repo" and ensuring the cache doesn't delete after x days and/or keep backups of the images they depend on.

If the package disappears, or the main repo falls over (cough github, cough), your devs, CI & prod aren't sat twiddling thumbs unable to work...

and if the package is nuked off the planet? You've got some time then to find an alternate / see where they move to.