The design of Provides-Dist and Obsoletes-Dist was lifted pretty
much directly from the design of Linux system package managers,
without accounting for the fact that Linux distro repos are collaboratively
maintained curated collections of packages with the ability to make
repository wide changes, while PyPI is an open publishing platform
with few practical restrictions other than size quotas and the default
first-come-first-served policy on claiming names.

Paul Ganssle made a good case that it's better to be
descriptive regarding Provides-Dist and Obsoletes-Dist
(it's a matter of objective fact that they're rarely used, and
installers ignore them completely), rather than attempting
to be retroactively prescriptive.