Formally asking a univerity for contact information of PhD I'm using certain software for my research and have some questions about troubleshooting and the output it creates. All the available information (manual, website and publication) isn't very extensive and can't answer my questions. That is why I want to contact the developer (a PhD) and ask my questions directly.

The problem is that the software is a little older but is still applicable to my research (never change a winning team). That's why maintenance of the website has probably stopped and the contact information there might not be correct anymore. I tried sending an e-mail to the adress on the page but never recieved an answer. What I do know is the name of the person I'm trying to reach. A simple Google search shows that this person is working at a certain univerity.

Question: Is it acceptable to contact this univerity and ask for contact information of one of their employees? And what is a polite way to ask this person for help? I might imagine that this might seem a bit rude and this is not appriciated. There is an online questionboard which has been inactive for some time now (as in years). But if somebody tried to contact me about my research, I would find the interest in my work flattering. I'm a little divided on the matter.
I assume that he has not a profile in that university, as you're asking this question. In a typical university's view, if a person among the staff were supposed to be contacted by people out side, its contact information would be announced, clearly, in the website. If not, it is not so reasonable to expect something unusual, is which not, completely, regular in university's policies.

If the software is a business product and you have paid for it, you have right to expect any defined kind of support for the package, officially (of course, if your target software version is not obsolete). In this case, you better contact ,directly, to the support division of the corresponding third party, instead of the lead or any of its developers.

If the target package is a part of a open source project, the case would need a different approach. Most of the open source softwares have been introduced, firstly, in a paper, is which expected to be referenced by the people using that software. The main leaders and supporters of the software are, actually, the authors of such reference papers. Even in the case of changing their affiliations (and consequently their contact address), you can find the paper's webpage in the responsible publishing journal and find the updated affiliations (is which a common fashion at least in my field, robotics)

After finding the new address, you can contact the person, safely. But, you better know that the fellows, involved in open source development, are not responsible to answer questions about the utilization of the software, but shall appreciate any reports corresponding to potential bugs or correspondences for collaboration in the development. The users are supposed to resolve their application-based issues by either searching in the forums or reading the tutorials. All in all, you might be lucky enough to catch some clues from this contact, at least.

Good luck