> It's a problem for my potential users. I don't get this "it's not your job to distribute your own software".
Your users on these platforms that you don't seem to understand, aren't expecting _you_ to package your own software, they want the maintainers of their distribution to package it, as they know the distribution, which you probably don't.
Large part of the point of using distributions like Debian and Ubuntu is exactly this, that there are people deeply familiar and knowledgable about the distribution itself, who package the software and apply any needed patches, or wrangle it into what's the standard for the distribution.
When something isn't packaged for these users but they feel like it's popular/useful enough to be, they'll open a request with their distribution for someone to maintain that, in the distribution itself, so everything is aligned. Even though they're not supposed to, some users will bother you and ask you to package it for them, which isn't correct and shouldn't be like that. They either package it themselves, or ask their distribution to do it for them, as the packaging shouldn't have anything to do with the developer of the software.
Your users on these platforms that you don't seem to understand, aren't expecting _you_ to package your own software, they want the maintainers of their distribution to package it, as they know the distribution, which you probably don't.
Large part of the point of using distributions like Debian and Ubuntu is exactly this, that there are people deeply familiar and knowledgable about the distribution itself, who package the software and apply any needed patches, or wrangle it into what's the standard for the distribution.
When something isn't packaged for these users but they feel like it's popular/useful enough to be, they'll open a request with their distribution for someone to maintain that, in the distribution itself, so everything is aligned. Even though they're not supposed to, some users will bother you and ask you to package it for them, which isn't correct and shouldn't be like that. They either package it themselves, or ask their distribution to do it for them, as the packaging shouldn't have anything to do with the developer of the software.