Hi Dag!

I wonder if Launchpad could do something like this:

When it first starts getting reports on a package, send mail to the upstream maintainer, telling them that downstream bugs in their package are being tracked here, and that they can subscribe, or use the web or rss interface, to be notified when there are changes to these bugs. This should be only once (or eg once/year), with an option to silence it.

I would guess Launchpad either has or could guess an upstream maintainer address from the packaging data, or it could ask people to find and enter one.