Published at LXer:

Distros have changed. In the past, they were made up of a small, tightly knit group collaborators working toward a common goal. With distributions today we now have an informal, large group of collaborators...some of which may not even be aware of the main goal of the distro. That informal collaborator may just want package foo version 2.2 included in his/her distribution so that he/she can use it on their desktop. How does that informal collaborator become empowered? How can the developers reap what that collaborator sows and harness the collective collaboration of thousands of informal contributors? The answer for many software projects is version control. But how can this system benefit package management?

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