Recently I have been noticing that more and more of my daily-use packages in Debian are old.

I am not talking about stuff in "Stable" where versions are not upgraded but fixes are backported, I am using Sid as my main workstation, and some stuff is really old

Example is rssguard, in Debian (any release), it is stuck on version 4.0.4, github is on 4.8.6.

I started digging, and I found out that there are over 4000 packages in Debian that are either orphared, or the maintainer is asking for help.

This is not sustainable, I tried looking into taking over a simple package, and honestly got overwhelmed, mostly because I am not a programmer in any way.

This is not just Debian, but any Debian derivative, including Ubuntu and its derivatives.

Take a look at https://wnpp.debian.net/ for a full list, see the packages that are orphaned and without owner, that is almost 1300. Admittedly, not all of them are critical or even important, but it should be a reason for concern.

The immediate solution for me is to use flatpaks. I find myself relying more and more on flatpaks or external repos. On my desktop is not really an issue, but I keep having nightmares about possible security problems.

The other option is of course to switch to something else, either Fedora and derivatives, or Arch and derivatives, but honestly after 20+ years of Debian, I am the old man who has no patience for new toys.

In short, Debian needs help, if you have the knowledge and the time, please consider taking over something.

Thank you

-nick