FWIW, in Debian, and hence Ubuntu, that’d be a clear-cut policy violation and thus an RC bug. Plus, there isn’t any reason to do so whatsoever. They should just use a normal file in /etc and dpkg should do the rest. Once a user has modified that file, it’s verboten by policy to silently overwrite it.
Goes to show that 3rd party repos can be a basket full of surprises.