i agree with christoph. some upstream maintainer hate you if you make a small note about something, others are happy for any feedback. i don't see how a policy can deal with this.
but of course i agree with you, bruce : we should first check, if the problem is debian related, and not bother upstream authors with bugs only related to debian or debian changes (like some files in the wrong place in a deb file or so). the solution is a good common sence, and now policy can teach us this. we better write a friendly text that states this, than a hard policy of do's and dont's. and we will always find non-cooperationg upstream authors, or get somehow in trouble with them. but i better risk talking with an upsstream author, than building a shell and not talkting to anyone, because he might misunderstand me or hate me. andreas
