> It is a miracle to me how anyone can think that packing for a specific distro is their job? It is not. The job is documenting how to package the software and

> It is a miracle to me how anyone can think that packing for a specific distro is their job? It is not. The job is documenting how to package the software and allow redistribution. I think the mentality of authors who package their projects for a specific distro comes from their familiarity with Windows, where there is only one distribution (more or less) and packaging for it is naturally the responsibility of software authors. They mistakenly apply their windows experience to the new task, probably entirely unaware of the faux pas. Often, knowing that there are a myriad of Linux distros, they mistakenly assume that the community of linux users are expecting them to support dozens of distros individually, testing on each one, and they become reasonably upset with that (mistaken) obligation. So they stamp their foot down and say "I support Ubuntu 13.04 specifically but if you use another distro then you're on your own!!" Then they go on to complain about fragmentation and say that linux users need to pick one distro and stick with it. Really, nobody expected them to support any specific linux distro in the first place but that is poorly communicated to otherwise experienced programmers who are new to linux.