I understand your point about FrankenDebian. Personally, I don’t think that’s the issue in these contexts.

I don’t have the answer to your question; you’ll need to check with the project leads.

Edit: I’m not familiar with backports-sloppy

As far as I can tell, it would seem so; let me explain:

• backports are Debian Team official

• extrepo is managed by Debian Team officially, since 2019/11, to offers packages not included on Stable, Testing; Debian Team is responsible for officially integrating unofficial third-party repositories to the Stable branch; the process involves checking and verifying that the third-party repository is ‘clean’—as far as possible—or, rather, free from malicious code or malware; The manager of a third-party repository is responsible for its contents.

• Debian Fast Track is an alternative repository to package for Stable branch, officially, since 2018/12. See:

  • https://fasttrack.debian.net/
  • and particularly: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/12/msg00297.html

• Fast Forward Debian is an initiative of Daniel Baumann — who is a Debian developer, his DDPO, since 2025/12; this is considered by Debian Team officially as Debian derivative distribution — which means that the DFSG must be strictly adhered to!

  • See: https://fastforward.debian.net/

extrepo, Debian Fast (Track|Forward] are managed on Debian Infrastructure!

So, unless I am mistaken, it is safe to say that yes, these third-party projects meet the same standards and quality requirements as the official project.

There is no problem with using the backports repositories or apps. The point is that sometimes, even in the backports archive, certain software are no longer maintained; this is the case with tilde, for example, which is still maintained for Testing and Sid… or not at all.

Instead of installing apps, the Debian team or certain team members have set up official system for managing software that has been ported, either because it is too recent or due to licensing issues, via the Fast (Track|Forward) and extrepo repositories.

This is why you’ll find a number of packages in these ‘official’ repositories that are not, or are no longer, in the stable repositories.

This doesn’t radically change your system, as the packages in these repositories are packaged for the stable branch.

(I hope I’ve understood correctly and, above all, summarised the point well)

Ohhh!

But the package is always available for testing and Sid!

?!

Egual, saddly, it's not available on extrepo, nor fast forward. :(