This, exactly. It's not a developer's job to package their code for every imaginable distro; it's their job to make the build process as simple as possible and let maintainers and users handle the packaging if they want the software. The time spent chasing down the hassles in the post would be better spent thinning the dependencies, if that's remotely feasible.

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righthand 6 hours ago | parent [-]

If developers can’t be bothered to ship their software to my platform, what is stopped someone else from stealing their FOSS (clone and rebrand) and shipping it themselves?

If I’m going to take on maintenance burden then I might as well make it how I want with a fork and take the notoriety.

	▲	trelane 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> what is stopped someone else from stealing their FOSS (clone and rebrand) and shipping it themselves? Nothing at all. This is not stealing. The term is "forking." It's how GCC got un-stagnated (see egcs), and how we got the ecosystem of alternate wifi firmware (two examples that come readily to mind.) This is also where Free and Open source diverge: Open Source lets someone block others from forking their fork, whereas Free Software requires that forks remain free to be forked themselves.