Please add a listing to this page if you're working on Distutils (and help us reduce duplication of effort).
CheeseShopDev / PyPI -- the central repository of python package metadata and distribution files.
Easy Install -- a Python package manager that downloads, builds, installs, upgrades, and switches between package versions automatically (using Python Eggs). See http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall
Python Eggs -- an effort to produce single-file distributions of packages similar to Java JARs. See http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PythonEggs
PEPs for extending distutils / PyPI -- PEPs 262 "Database of Installed Python Packages" and 345 "Metadata for Python Software Packages 1.2" are currently open
Uraga -- an effort to develop a tool for download and installation of packages. See http://www.byteofpython.info/projects/uraga/uraga.html
zpkgtools -- a source-based packaging system. See http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/zpkgtools/
stdeb -- build debian source packages using setuptools and the "sdist" distutils command. See http://stdeb.python-hosting.com/
Other efforts we know about:
Ian Bicking is looking to clean up and extend the use of release_urls in PyPI for use in Paste.
Maurice Ling is looking at implementing PEP 262 as an academic project.
Geoffrey T. Dairiki has a bdist_deb command http://bugs.python.org/1054967
eGenix uses its own extensions to distutils in the various egenix-mx packages called mxSetup.py. Among other things this module contains support for building Unix libraries, limited autoconf support, uninstall command and a clever build_ext command that allows to disable building extensions/packages from the command line and also supports building optional extensions (depending on the availability of certain include and library files).
Distribute -- A community-driven project that aims to gather all requirements for a future distribution package.