Re: aren't software authors misestimated?

[Michele Alessandrini <m.alessandrini@ea.univpm.it>]

Hi, thanks everyone for replies.
I understand the role and the work of package maintainers, but I think it 
should be comparable with the work of upstream author who developed the 
software, so maybe the name of the author and the url of the program might 
have the opportunity of being reported everywhere the maintainer name is 
(e.g., when pressing "i" in dselect).

>  * Bugs etc. that are present in the Debian package as well as the
>    upstream package are also known to the Debian package maintainer.
>  * The package maintainer will relieve the upstream maintainer from some
>    of the burden of user support; often the maintainer will be able to
>    handle user support questions him/herself.
>  * The package maintainer knows the procedures of upstream maintenance,
>    e.g. which mailing lists and e-mail aliases there are, where and how
>    to report bugs, etc. Also, the upstream maintainers know the Debian
>    maintainers and know, whom to contact in case of problems, etc.
>
But I think a software author strongly wishes to acknowledge everything 
happens about his program, like users feedback, criticisms, bugs, 
suggestions, so in many cases he would not delegate others for this "burden" 
(translated: "joy" for little to middle program authors :-).

Michele