I must say that I do not like this proposal. The current situation does result
in under-maintained packages requiring churn, but that's true for many aspects
of them, not least their policy version. It's a good indicator of which
packages need some attention.
That's not what I dislike about the suggestion, though. I think it makes the
cognitive load of the control file larger. You have to know there are special
rules that exist for some URLs, but not all. It ties the function of the control
file closely to Debian, and if other control users like Ubuntu implement
something similar, there are even more special cases for a maintainer to have
to understand. A simple URL like we have now is quite self-describing, and if
you find a control file in the wild you don't need any additional expert
knowledge to use it.

If/as rules change over time you will have skew from control files and the 
current state of affairs, unless you try to version it and then we truly do
have something too overengineered IMHO.


-- 
Jonathan Dowland

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