The adoption problems Python 3 still has at this point, could be mitigated entirely if package owners could lose the name for outdated packages and it would be transferred to a Python 3 fork. npm has this problem on an even larger scale. The Python community can at least slowly move away from PIL and use Pillow instead, because the libraries are reasonably big. This is much harder to do with all of npms tiny packages. I doubt that the best solution always wins, because the best name is just an enormous advantage.
If names would be democratically assigned, we would get some kind of extended standard library. Newbies that want the best library for their problem that works with the current version of the language would not have to search for Beautifulsoup, voluptuous or requests, but could just use xml, validation and http.
Of course, this is a hard problem and you have to be careful. We do not want Java, we do not want broken dependencies. So my ideas a solution could be based on are these (example is for pip, but applies to others as well):
# No fork exists
pip install flask
>Downloading/unpacking mitshuko.flask
>…
# A fork exists
pip install flask
>Multiple users have created a package named "flask". Please specify the owner
>of the package or use "--most-popular" to install the one with the most
>installations in the last 3 months.
>
>*****************************************************************************
>Attention: pip does not check if the package actually does the same thing, be
>sure to check that before you switch to a package from another author.
>*****************************************************************************
>
>mitsuhiko.flask (10000 installations)
>forker.flask (3 installations)
pip install --most-popular flask
>Downloading/unpacking mitsuhiko.flask
>…
pip install -U flask
# On upgrade, this message is only shown, when the used package is
# already at the current version, has not been updated for a long time
# and a more popular option exists.
>You have installed the current version of mitsuhiko.flask, however
>mitsuhiko.flask has not been updated since 7 months and there is a more
>popular package available of the same name from another author.
>
>*****************************************************************************
>Attention: pip does not check if the package actually does the same thing, be
>sure to check that before you switch to a package from another author.
>*****************************************************************************
>
>forker.flask (5000 installations)
>mitsuhiko.flask (4000 installations)
pip install -U forker.flask
>Downloading/unpacking mitshuko.flask
>…