You can always adapt to your how repo. But yeah, that’s the point. If you can trust people to make changes on a repo then you should be able to trust them in using some kind of commit structure.
Generic names are probably used in order to crate a familiar, easy to remember, structurized commit format.
What’s wrong with having a some year old software? Does it do what you need? Yes. Then what? I have all I need on Debian. Why should I care of new updates. Security? Yes we have Debian security because of that. Look, y’all had the xyz backdoor package in your systems because it was new. Me as a Debian stable user I didn’t have to deal with it. Did I lose something by not having the latests software? No. Well maybe less crashes.
Most privative software also gets weekly updates. Does it make it better? No. You may prefer that.
Also I don’t get the point about the version numbering of Debian packages. Every team uses the versioning they want.
From my experience software that updates a lot tends to break old features a lot too.
Debian suporting freesoftware projects or other stuff doesn’t look as a relevant argument. I mean if you prefer using privative stuff and using that kind of software. Do whatever you like with your Google/Facebook/Apple friends.
But don’t come intoxicate the community with this bullshit.