No, that's not what I mean. Most distributions do things like splitting dev-files and debug symbols and documenation. What I mean is taking one piece of softw

No, that's not what I mean. Most distributions do things like splitting dev-files and debug symbols and documenation. What I mean is taking one piece of software and splitting it apart into many libraries or binaries in a way that the upstream developer did not originally intend. See some of the other responses.