The main complaints I came across and who IMHO need urgent attention are:
1. It is impossible for a typical Mac user to install Fink on Panther and get it running correctly without handholding by an expert.
2. It is practically impossible to use the Fink bindist without having the developer tools installed. There may be a way, but for a newbie it is impossible to find.
3. There are literally hundreds of packages in 10.3/stable that have never been looked at by their maintainers. Dozens have maintainers that haven't been heard of for many months.
It would be very dangerous if we lost our grip on the two main advantages that Fink has with respect to other similar projects, namely that we are a community that renews itself permanently and that our packages "just work". It would be useful if some of the energy that is being spent on implementing new features and reorganizing things could be spent on solving these more fundamental problems.
Here are some points related to 1.-3. above:
1. If you install Fink-0.6.2, you don't see the "current" bindist. You have to update various things in the right order, starting with fink itself, in order to get there. FinkCommander refuses to see the packages in "current" even after several update attempts. apt-get sees them a little earlier, but not out of the box either. Even after having watched apt-get to download the Packages files from "current", it still doesn't admit that they exist. I got them only after having run "fink selfupdate", but for this you need the developer tools, because it starts recompiling things immediately.
If you don't pay attention to what apt-get proposes to install, it will start installing some xfree86 things plus tetex, although you have X11 and GWtex installed. For ghostscript you are out of luck, because there is no working system-ghostscript in stable.
2. The fink-0.16 that comes with the 0.6.2-dmg has a virtual package system that produces a "x11" package only when /usr/X11R6/include/X11/Xlib.h is present which comes with the dev tools. Therefore without dev tools no package that needs x11 can be installed, even from the bindist. One has to update fink to a later version, but not by using "fink selfupdate", because this needs the dev tools.
3. There are dozens of packages still depending on dlcompat-shlibs. I bet none of these have been looked at by their maintainers after the move to Panther. There are hundreds still depending on dlcompat-dev which, in principle, would be less annoying, because dlcompat-dev is supposed to be a dummy package. But unfortunately, dlcompat-dev itself depends on dlcompat-shlibs. Go figure.
-- Martin
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