No it wouldn't help downstream package maintainers. You're right in that package maintainers can't tell where the fixes and new features are coming in, they'll not introduce their own releases. However upstream is not everyone's taste either, in that configuration changes require recompiling of the respective binary. Releases hence make sense for software that fits everyone's needs with their configuration files, which is untrue either for most suckless projects.
cheers! mar77i
