It would be more user-friendly, I agree. But it would require much more maintenance work from us to keep such a repository up-to-date, which is simething we simply can not do right now because of lack of time and staff members. One of the dev team members is currently working on a download repository page as a replacement for the sourceforge.net downloads page that might be confusing for beginners. We might consider offering some plugins there as well - plugins can be shipped as single files. I'm reluctant though to offer mod packages that contain modified core files, as you will have to review every single one of them when a new package is being released, which simply is too much of an effort. Additionally, there will definitely be collissions between mod packages: if mod A comes with a new displayimage.php as well as mod B, which one should the end user use? Installing mod B after having mod A already up-and-running will then break mod A. As you can see, that's a tricky thing.
That's why most major FOSS projects sooner or later had to make up their minds how they are going to handle mods. Our decision/goal is obvious: use plugins (additional files that use Coppermine's plugin API and don't require end users to modify core files). So if you want to contribute something to the community, why not consider converting a mod into a plugin?
So please don't be mad at me - your suggestion is in itself valid and understandable. However, I'm marking your thread as "turned down". Everyone is welcome to prove me wrong and offer help maintaining such a repository.
Bottom line: point taken, but turned down due to lack of time. If there was a group of volunteers (a mods team) that would like to take care of such a section in the long run, I'm all ears.
As long as we don't have a mods team (minimum 2 persons) who have in-detail knowledge of coppermine, the only thing that we're going to offer in the near future will be a download repository for plugins, but not one for mods.
Joachim