As a regular Linux user who doesn't publish apps but has been reading this argument for years I've never understood the value distros provide.
They're clearly doing a huge amount of work editing everything, but it also doesn't seem like they have the resources to properly test their edits. And while their edits are necessary to make everything work with their system, from a high level perspective they don't seem to be making the software better at what I want it to do. Given that, their model looks like dangerous busywork that at best delays updates and at worst introduces new bugs.
Distros use the word "maintain" to describe what they're doing, but they don't seem to be doing that. To maintain a piece of software I'd expect the maintainer to need a deep understanding of the source code and to continually monitor changes. The complaints maintainers post that software changed seem to prove they aren't doing that.
When I first saw a maintainer complain a library only posted about a breaking build change in their release notes and mailing list I was shocked. I had been assuming they were reading diffs, when they weren't even reading the changelog.
They're clearly doing a huge amount of work editing everything, but it also doesn't seem like they have the resources to properly test their edits. And while their edits are necessary to make everything work with their system, from a high level perspective they don't seem to be making the software better at what I want it to do. Given that, their model looks like dangerous busywork that at best delays updates and at worst introduces new bugs.
Distros use the word "maintain" to describe what they're doing, but they don't seem to be doing that. To maintain a piece of software I'd expect the maintainer to need a deep understanding of the source code and to continually monitor changes. The complaints maintainers post that software changed seem to prove they aren't doing that.
When I first saw a maintainer complain a library only posted about a breaking build change in their release notes and mailing list I was shocked. I had been assuming they were reading diffs, when they weren't even reading the changelog.