file ownership

[john gennard <joney@clara.co.uk>]

In Potato, I'm installing qt-2.0.1 from a tar.gz. After uncompressing,
unpacking and re-naming the directory  'qt', I checked its permissions
and found owner and group given as '508'.  On a previous occasion,
when compiling some other software (forgotten what), I noticed its
owner and group was shown as 'staff'.

I presume this is the work of the software producer and not Debian.
Can anyone explain the significance of '508' and say if I can safely
change ownership or if some other course of action is desirable.

Grateful for any assistance.

John.