"And his packages help users even more if he can get his changes into Debian or (even better) upstream."
Some of his packages (AFAICT) are built from upstream sources, but configured to include capabilities that the debian folk won't or can't build into theirs, like mplayer.
Others are packages excluded from debian entirely for these reasons, like libdvdcss.
The maintainer is providing the user who doesn't care about, or who is not in a jurisdiction where they have to care about it, a whole bunch of codecs and capabilities that the base distro doesn't and will not include.
Some of his packages (AFAICT) are built from upstream sources, but configured to include capabilities that the debian folk won't or can't build into theirs, like mplayer.
Others are packages excluded from debian entirely for these reasons, like libdvdcss.
The maintainer is providing the user who doesn't care about, or who is not in a jurisdiction where they have to care about it, a whole bunch of codecs and capabilities that the base distro doesn't and will not include.