[Rolf Krahl]
Then i still wonder why these authors do not simply contribute these modifcations to the author of the library rather then maintaining their own version of the library. This would make life easier for all, including them.
This would probably work in an ideal world, where everybody have oodles of free time for timely responding to all requests, and where everybody is collaborative, nice and understanding to the needs of everybody else. But real life differs. Maintainers might devote much time to the job allowing them to survive, without much ability to predict their free time, be surprised by health problems, get discouraged from interactions with users or other maintainers or even distracted by love affairs, who knows :-). For example, I observed more than once maintainers loosing almost all interest in their own package after some impatient guys decided to publish a release on their side, to address a particular single feature. When the new other maintainers are only interested in that feature, without the vision of the original author or maintainer, the development is likely to stall. Then, various package maintainers depending on the stalled package cannot accept being stalled in turn, and so, despite all their good will, might choose to move on, even if it means split development and some confusion. Please do not misquote me: I'm not necessarily speaking about `zlib'! :-) -- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard