My personal opinion as someone who works a lot with Django but not (for now, at least) Pinax is that they hit the problem, common in the open-source world, of starting to hit the popularity curve before they were really ready for it. Pinax started getting attention and flattering blog posts and such when there were still several issues to work out with the way Pinax itself was packaged, how applications were vetted for inclusion, etc., etc.
Fortunately, popularity has also brought them plenty of new contributors, which means this stuff either has been worked out (e.g., for things like packaging -- now using pip with custom bootstraps, and requiring every app to be installable through it, which is pretty much the ideal) or is being subjected to a flurry of activity.
My personal opinion as someone who works a lot with Django but not (for now, at least) Pinax is that they hit the problem, common in the open-source world, of starting to hit the popularity curve before they were really ready for it. Pinax started getting attention and flattering blog posts and such when there were still several issues to work out with the way Pinax itself was packaged, how applications were vetted for inclusion, etc., etc.
Fortunately, popularity has also brought them plenty of new contributors, which means this stuff either has been worked out (e.g., for things like packaging -- now using pip with custom bootstraps, and requiring every app to be installable through it, which is pretty much the ideal) or is being subjected to a flurry of activity.