Yes it does. Sooner or later, it’s a need. Why? Because some plugins are a must for some people. They have to be forked so that those people can keep using them. Examples: Contact Form and Query Monitor. And many others.
Yeap, I made that proposal and not only that, but it’s actually already working (there you have your action).
Slowly? Very wrong. If you do it slowly, there will already be 100+ plugins in the directory and then the excuse will be: “no we cannot do that because there are already many plugins and blahblahblah”. It has to be done BEFORE (also known as having a plan).
This whole thing leads to apple trees growing peaches and talking without doing. You cannot “just do things”. You have to have a plan before doing something. That is the fundamental base for any project.
If you don’t have a plan then you end up doing whatever and then boom, you have “WordPress: a total mess”.
I am talking and talking and also doing (see what I have done here). And I will keep talking as long as I see a minimum of potential in this project, to push planing and reasonable ideas as much as I can.
No plan → You end up with a total mess.
No talk → No plan.
If you read through this whole topic for example, nobody has given serious feedback on the proposal. It’s all just critics without alternatives and blind nos.