Quoting "Stefan Haller" <haliner@googlemail.com>:
Dear mentors, I upgraded the package “sqlitebrowser” to a new upstream release. The latestrelease is 2.0b1. That’s why I’ve choosen “1.9+2.0b1-1” as Debian version number. The package uses now the the new dpkg-source format “3.0 quilt”, so I’ve changedmany files in the debian/-directory. (I hope this is ok?) The package is not my own package, so if this not the right place to ask, please give me a hint ;) Lintian also complains, because it’s a NMU, but the version number doesn’t reflect this. But I packaged a new upstream release, I don’t know how the version number should look like in such a case.#
The pair of maintainer name and the email address given in the last entry in debian/changelog could not be found in Maintainer nor Uploaders fields in debian/control, thus lintian correctly assumes you are trying to prepare an NMU, and insists on seeing a proper NMU version numbering. Either you add yourself as Maintainer or Uploders (lintian is not picky about spaces), with the acceptance of the current maintainer (I can't see any feedback from them in 561643), or prepare a proper NMU (see Debian Developers Reference). However a new upstream version, with so many changes applied, without fixing any RC-bugs does not justifies an NMU. If I were you, I'd probably ping the maintainer, once again via 561643 (though they only had few days to react according to the last entry), and discuss with them if a new upstream version is really warranted (perhaps it fixes important issues?) while the project is trying to approach a release.