Fedora developers on PackageKit

Is there any substantial research in this area (e.g. thesis). Sounds like discussing the
merits of centralized vs decentralized packaging/distribution has several interesting aspects
(quality, economics, ...)

It looks like there's a topic our beloved editor could undertake one day: ISV on Linux. May
even be interesting to survey the actors themselves (opera, skype, ) and the distributors.
E.g. ubuntu has a commercial repository. Were they commissioned to package those packets ?