I mailed Andres Köenig today with a suggestion to make it possible to update the BUGS file separately from the distribution like you can do with the README file.
This strict requirement does have one exception: documentation files may be overwritten. There's a simple regular expression that draws the line between docu und code:
/(README|readme|\.html|\.txt)$/. Filenames matching this RE can be uploaded as often as you like.
If I look at the life-cycle of my modules up to now, bugs are often discovered post-release, either by users, cpan-testers or myself. The RT system is not always used and does there for not give a complete picture of possible problems/bugs, the author is mostly the center of things.
Release of module->*bug discovered*->Release of bugfix->
With this cycle the bug is not publicly known until the fix is implemented.
Following my suggestion the bugs/issues in a released distribution/module can become visible when acknowledged by the author.
This is of course possible by keeping a bug list in the README, but if you ask me the README is more of a static document, often generated from the POD.
I guess some authors even keep their bug listings in the POD section BUGS, perhaps even generating the BUGS file from this section? This could still be done, but the BUGS file should become separated from the dist like the README.
