That's not quite the right perspective. You most likely do know your software better, after all, you wrote it. However, their concern is the integration of yo

That's not quite the right perspective. You most likely do know your software better, after all, you wrote it. However, their concern is the integration of your software into larger system, and they may well be more familiar with those issues than you are. In all my years of (Debian) distribution maintenance, this was the most typical cause of disagreement between packagers and upstreams. It's very common for upstreams to make fairly arbitrary decisions which might make sense in the context of an individual project, but which are not appropriate when considered as part of the system as an integrated whole. Neither are wrong per se, but as an upstream, your focus is on your project and it's easy to miss the bigger picture issues. Conversely, packagers' focus upon the system as a whole, so their view is at a higher level. Additional to this, don't just discount the knowledge and expertise of distribution maintainers. There are of course some who just blindly package up other people's work and aren't experts. However, there are others who are software authors in their own right, with decades of accumulated experience and understanding. The latter may well know more than you do, and might be able to provide some keen insights you could benefit from. There are an awful lot of developers who don't know how to make software releases properly in a way that allows it to be consumed straightforwardly by others, with proper understanding of API and ABI issues, proper versioning, and proper use of build systems.