Secondly, debian packages are maintaned by debian. Most of debian's packaging projects reside in salsa.debian.org. Though, the usual way to submit patches would be via bug reports to bugs.debian.org for debian packages and bugs.devuan.org for devuan packages. I as you said there is a bug number for your issue you would submit to that.

While preparing Spaced Linux 10.26.7 on Devuan Ceres/sysvinit, I found a reproducible problem in the current mate-control-center 1.28.1-1 source package.

When the libsystemd development files are absent, the default
--enable-systemd=auto configuration path fails instead of disabling the
optional systemd integration.

This has already been reported and fixed upstream by MATE:

Issue:
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-co … issues/753

Upstream fix:
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-co … 5713174ede

Spaced Linux carries that upstream commit verbatim for 10.26.7:

Exact backport:
https://github.com/crhy/spaced/blob/5b5 … tion.patch

Ceres package build integration:
https://github.com/crhy/spaced/blob/5b5 … -center.sh

Full Spaced Linux pull request:
https://github.com/crhy/spaced/pull/376

Commit:
https://github.com/crhy/spaced/commit/5 … 115f1792d3

There is a second packaging detail: mate-time-admin is only built when the
optional systemd integration is enabled, but Debian's
mate-control-center-common.install unconditionally requires
usr/share/mate-time-admin/. A non-systemd package build therefore also needs
that manifest entry removed or made conditional.

Validation completed:

- The upstream patch applies cleanly with dpkg-source to Ceres
  mate-control-center 1.28.1-1.
- An isolated Ceres binary package build completed successfully.
- The resulting packages passed Spaced's staging and payload checks.
- The full Spaced release preflight, 253 Python tests, and 2 GTK integration
  tests passed.

I could not submit this to a current Devuan GitHub package repository. The
Devuan GitHub organization does not contain mate-control-center, and the only
Devuan Gitea copy I found appears to be an old user repository last updated in
2021. The current source package identifies the Debian MATE team's Salsa
repository as Vcs-Git.

Would Devuan prefer to:

1. carry upstream commit b5f6b8c as a small Ceres package delta, together with
   a conditional mate-time-admin manifest entry; or
2. have the complete packaging change forwarded through Debian's MATE team
   first?

The upstream change remains init-neutral. It does not make systemd support
default-off; it simply makes the existing "auto" setting behave correctly
when libsystemd is unavailable.

Should I do something differently regarding the systemd creep?  Should I post this info somewhere else?  Thanks in advance,

rhY