I'm working on a project (licensed under the GPLv3) and I have decided to be my own maintainer, i.e: building and distributing packaged versions of my project all by myself:
1. my project is young and unknown, I have no choice but to package it myself (I really like AUR by the way);
2. it lets me write and maintain step-by-step documentation;
3. it allows me to enforce a consistent interface for my project across operating systems, I know my project can be used the exact same way on any operating system I have packaged it for;
4. I have had bad experiences with maintainers having no idea what they are doing and completely breaking my software;
5. It allows me to build a full release pipeline including both source and binary releases.
The first point is sort of a big deal, having packages is important to drive adoption, therefore I need to invest my time in that. I'm not gonna wait for some random folks to package it a few years down the road (if that ever happens).
My work is not incompatible with downstream packaging, but I do intend to work closely with (or directly maintain) any downstream package.
I really feel like this is sort of a catch-22.