RE: https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/116625664185661900

Most new open source projects have gone the whole idea direct to users is the way to go.

This has caused the idea that you can only support a few things and that then CI that one thing to death. Rather than the idea distros are out there to help spread the burden of testing/support and have a layer to help all spread the support to more than just the developers.

This is why for an example GCC does NOT do binary releases at all. It would be burden to directly support those even on a select few distros (which ones again? CentOS 8, 9 or 10? Ubuntu 2404 or the latest LTS? SuSE xx? what about gentoo, etc.).
So distros help spread the support , testing layers and even come back to the developers saying this is broken and many of the times how to fix it.
Developers only need to do one testing but distros help both sides. Even help by doing development and even push for a new feature (to the extend not being pushy maybe even help by getting funding directly from the users to develop it).