easy_install works just like CPAN. Download and install stuff so the standard distribution software management tools are now worthless for:
1. Knowing what is installed on which production machines (basic software inventory)
2. Reporting packages with dependencies on a package with a newly reported security issue
3. Automatically upgrading to new releases
4. Easily rebuilding and deploying to multiple hosts on different architectures and different releases of distros (possibly different distros)
5. Managing dependency conflicts between different packages
and more that escape me right now because I haven't finished my coffee yet.
CPAN, easy_install and their ilk are wonderful for the developer that needs a bunch of stuff to get their application working. They are evil incarnate for the administrator that needs that application to work reliably and consistently on more that a couple of machines.
There is a huge difference between "easily installing stuff" and managing systems. The second you add anything that "works around" the standard way of doing things, whatever standard you've adopted, you've abandoned all hope of having standard operating procedures and consistent production management.
This is why systems administrators get so edgy... Every developer, user, language community, or whatever, thinks their little exception makes life easier. Exceptions don't scale.
Ok, they do scale. They evolve into chaos.
