Jeff, the problem with Gravatar is that it used to be a really simple self-contained system. Since the integration with WordPress.com (years ago), Gravatar suffers from a painful sign-on (good chance of conflict with another WordPress.com address). Gravatar as a cool easy free service was fantastic.

Gravatar as heavy login, tracking software which follows you around the web is a lot less cool.

You are right. The time has come for simple uploadable avatars within WordPress.

David Shanke wrote:

So, someone has to lead the effort to put in a local implementation. We can talk about it, but someone needs to spearhead it. The ticket has been open for a long time now.

The issue is that there are great solutions there just ready to be integrated but since the PTB don't want local avatars, there will be endless bickering and reasons invented why nothing is adequate. It's worse than my quest to improve comment caching. When we created Trac tickets, they were closed by core committers or at best left to languish as Intense Debate is an Automattic product (not sure anyone cares about Intense Debate these days so we should try again). Local avatars (Gravatar competition) are a no-no.

The avatar Trac ticket is linked in Jeff's post and above in my quotation from David Shenke. Perhaps we can all put enough energy in to push this one through this time.