The core-adjacent people have completely failed to produce reasonable packaging tools for decades, why would you want another new tool from them?

Who said anything about it coming from core-adjacent people?

Was Kenneth Reitz "core-adjacent" when Requests was brought under the PSF umbrella?

Is there anyone seriously involved in packaging who is neither working at Astral nor a PyPA member?

Well, if I didn't have a bunch of other ideas for things to work on, and if I felt like anyone cared, there would be me....