Oh, I think it would work out as long as they were willing to submit to the developer's opinions about what dependencies are needed.
In this case, a bunch of people who pride themselves on not patching software willy-nilly, decided to, um, patch software willy-nilly in order to "fix" the "travesty" of a -- cue heartburn -- "Windows developer with a Windows mentality" (
WTF) patching software instead of fixing it the "proper way".
Their amazingly high standards, meanwhile, break software in new and inventive ways. The irony factor beats debian's patch-happy attitude hands-down.
Oh, well -- at least they make it easy to roll your own.
Perhaps we will have a common packaging format in The Year of the Linux Desktop.
Perhaps the two are not unrelated...