Hackage and Stackage serve different purposes. Hackage is all packages, while Stackage is a curated set of packages. (Therefore, Hackage is essentially the "upstream" of Stackage.) We shouldn't give up on Hackage.

I know I'm jumping into a very, very touchy topic, but isn't the following possible:

* Stackage & Hackage combine -- even the .cabal & .stack file formats (if possible)

* The combined entity supports curated packages (via LTS) AND a global free-for-all package list. I, as a user, get to decide how I want my packages to be resolved -- via a curated LTS or via the global package index.

* The combined entity focuses on building a kickass, unified, piece of community infra, instead of dividing effort+resources and solving similar problems twice.

-- Saurabh.