> Orbit essentially
                                              is like Maven Central
                                              
                                              In that case I don't
                                              understand why do we need
                                              Orbit at all. With the
                                              latest announcements
                                              regarding tycho
                                              capabilities from
                                              Christoph + lack of
                                              resources to support Orbit
                                              in safe form it seems to
                                              be useless.
                                          
                                         
                                       
                                      
                                      
                                      You have hit the
                                        nail on the head! Although
                                        useless is going a little far.
                                        Orbit does not likely have a
                                        long term future. However as
                                        there are many projects that
                                        build from it still we need it.
                                        Also there is a problem if
                                        multiple projects start
                                        contributing the same version of
                                        third party lib that will
                                        hopefully be solved in the
                                        future with PGP signing. 
                                      
                                      
                                      Orbit should not
                                        be directly contributing to
                                        simrel, but for a variety of
                                        reasons it does (see comments in
                                        the file) 
                                      
                                      
                                      As mentioned in
                                        the Gerrit, passage's p2 repo
                                        should be publishing its third
                                        party deps and it should be
                                        possible for consumers to
                                        install passage from passage's
                                        p2 repo without requiring an
                                        orbit repo be added too. 
                                      
                                      
                                      I know for sure
                                        that numerous projects are not
                                        quite doing that (again see
                                        comments in orbit.aggrcon) but
                                        hopefully at some point the
                                        temporary contribution of orbit
                                        to simrel directly can be
                                        removed.