> > I'm still trying to understand if it's a good idea to contact > > upstream authors and tell them their software is being worked on to > > be included in Debian, or not. .. > So my advice is to go for it, maintaining software in Debian is much > more fun when there is a positive exchange with the upstream. > > Were I to encounter an hostile upstream (it has not happened to me yet, > but will surely at some point), I guess I would give up on the related > software and go package something else. There is many software out > there that would deserve to be packaged into Debian, so we can afford > to be picky and only work with the nice upstreams.
+100 to this. Personally I find that collaboration with others is the most rewarding aspect of participating in open source in general, and all the benefits that come from collaboration and having lots of eyeballs and also many people innovating is what I think binrgs the overall largest value to all of humanity. If you come across upstreams that don't want to collaborate, I suggest you move on to work with others instead. You should not avoid contacting upstreams. Eventually they will find out, and it is much better to reach out early than late. Also, while packaging in Debian you with 90% certainty come across upstream bugs and issues that result in patches in Debian, and you should definitely submit those patches upstream. To make submitting patches upstream (and rebasing them occasionally if upstream is slow to merge your submission), I recommend starting the packaging using the actual upstream git repository and running `git checkout -b debian/latest` as the first step.
