Last year I came across this post which explained the topic quite well <https://nesbitt.io/2025/12/24/package-managers-keep-using-git-as-a-database.html>
It's a bit over my head how to actually solve it though. But I think it's a scalability issue that every packages existence automatically takes up hard drive space on everyone's computer even if they don't use those packages. And I think it's essential to support "thin clients", consumers of guix that strictly use substitutes, and need things to be efficient and fast
