A long long time ago, when LSB was starting up, I wrote a proposal to use RDF metadata in a package management system: the idea was to let binary and source and other installations all co-exist, without affecting multiple databases. Basically there would be an API which installers would use, and which would have to be implemented by pakage managers.. Its at http://reno.cis.upenn.edu/~rahul/standards/packrdf/
There wasnt much interest then, so I dropped the whole idea..but since the topic came up again, I thought I'd bring it up again, incase there is anything useful (which I still think there is..) Rahul
