in reply to Give up your modules!
The point in this case would be to allow a central administrative group to add/re-allocate commit/release permissions to a new maintainer if the old maintainer is uncontactable after a certain amount of time.
It would also, however, offer a number of other great options such as diffing module versions, providing a way for users to track dev versions of a module etc. I don't think it ever should/could become mandatory for using CPAN, but a sanctioned central one could provide a good focus for our (somewhat overly) distributed model.
Update: Just read xdg's comment about adamk's repository which I hadn't heard of (must look into). I think that to get some traction an "official" repositary with (more) guaranteed stability would be important.