If I'm understanding correctly, the point is not "Don't do what you've been doing in sandboxes," but rather "Do it in the /contributions/modules directory instead, it's better there". As folks have pointed out, the sandboxes have served a valuable role for contrib modules. As developers, many of us have used our sandboxes as places to work up experimental code. We have benefited from access to others' code. But do we need to do this particularly in sandboxes? The use of sandboxes for developing code valuable to the community has had some costs, e.g., multiple versions of the same module (not clear which one is current), obsolete code not deleted when a newer version is in contributions/modules, loss of CVS history when code is moved, etc. Personally, I've used my sandbox because I hesitate to put code in the 'sacred' /contributions/modules directory. What I'm hearing is, don't worry so much. Starting an experimental project, not yet (maybe never) ready for distribution? Go ahead, create a new directory at contributions/modules and do it there. Not ready for download? Simple, just don't create a project - yet - on drupal.org. Only people doing CVS browsing or checkouts will see it. All developers will have CVS write access to the directory (just like has always been the case for sandboxes), so you can collaborate. Experiment to your heart's content. Later, you can always delete the project, or create a drupal.org project for it if/when it's ready, or request to have it moved elsewhere (e.g., into an existing project's directory, if it's meant as part of that project). Look through the /modules directory right now and you'll find plenty of directories like this. So, I'm thinking, we're not really losing anything. We're just going back to how it was always supposed to be: develop new code in its place, rather than in a sandbox. As an added bonus, we won't lose CVS history for projects. In general (CVS maintainers, please correct me if I'm wrong), we can summarize the message as "The contributions/modules directory, rather than sandboxes, is the right place for (experimental or otherwise) code for contrib modules".