The same applies today for nodejs and go, but the same was happening with python, ruby and perl libraries in the past.
However, this only shows that standard distro packaging approach is broken or was broken all the time. First, if you want to distribute you application (or library) via distro packages, you'd either have to build them and publish on your site or have to go through long mailing process to satisfy distro specific packaging guidelines and hope that your package will end up in standard (or extended) distribution. Debian is also notorious for "reviewing" and modifying source code, without contacting authors (remember Debian SSH fiasco).
I had, not once, unpleasant experience with this process.
Today, things are much easier - pack your whatever and put on dockerhub, maven or github. No middleman and no headaches just to reach your users. Sure, there are drawbacks (like mentioned in article), but we'd have to leverage things like GPG and proper package signing. Now, that is totally different story, because cryptography, even the basic one, is PITA for most developers and users. You can't have both :D
However, this only shows that standard distro packaging approach is broken or was broken all the time. First, if you want to distribute you application (or library) via distro packages, you'd either have to build them and publish on your site or have to go through long mailing process to satisfy distro specific packaging guidelines and hope that your package will end up in standard (or extended) distribution. Debian is also notorious for "reviewing" and modifying source code, without contacting authors (remember Debian SSH fiasco).
I had, not once, unpleasant experience with this process.
Today, things are much easier - pack your whatever and put on dockerhub, maven or github. No middleman and no headaches just to reach your users. Sure, there are drawbacks (like mentioned in article), but we'd have to leverage things like GPG and proper package signing. Now, that is totally different story, because cryptography, even the basic one, is PITA for most developers and users. You can't have both :D