gdbm tarball files are g-r o-r

[timeless]

$ curl -s -O http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdbm/gdbm-1.8.3.tar.gz
$ curl -s -O http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.9.tar.gz
$ tar xf gdbm-1.8.3.tar.gz gdbm-1.8.3/README
$ tar xf coreutils-8.9.tar.gz coreutils-8.9/README
$ ls -hal */README
-rw-r--r--  1 user  wheel    11K Jan  1 23:19 coreutils-8.9/README
-rw-------  1 user  wheel   1.6K Oct  7  2002 gdbm-1.8.3/README

The vast majority of source packages in an average Linux distribution
are g+r o+r

would it be possible to change the packaging system for gdbm so that
it does chmod -R +r or similar before creating its tarball?

thanks.