[moe]

But what's the problem with sources.list, as long as the user doesn't have to manage or even know that it exists?

You are right. My point was that I (the user) shouldn't need to know that a file by this name exists. Of course debian is free to maintain the bookkeeping in any way appropriate.

I don't see how - there's no standard on GH projects for installation; some projects are installed by simple make/make install, others with easy_install/gems/npm, etc.

People would check-in either the deb or the debian/ meta-files. The latter would be preferable, but the deb package-building process needs to be simplified for developers to consider participating.

The current deb building procedure is a trainwreck, which is in fact a related problem. Homebrew recipes and gentoo ebuilds are trivial in comparison, there's no reason the deb process needs to be as convoluted as it is.