The octave-unstable PPA

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

I am a little uncomfortable with the octave-unstable PPA for Ubuntu
for a number of reasons.

You are now distributing an alpha release as if it were stable. Ubuntu
users don't typically learn to discriminate about the stability of
their packaging sources. They are conditioned to believe that
"unstable" means "Debian unstable" which means "current" which means
"the best". This now means that Ubuntu users will take look at the
Octave GUI which is still in a rough state. I don't know what the
download statistics are like, but I am uncomfortable with Octave's
reputation being tarnished by the wide release of an alpha release
(it's obtained from alpha.gnu.org, after all).

The packaging is now diverging from the Debian Octave Group's own
packaging, and correct me if I'm wrong, the new packaging isn't even
under version control. Or did you guys start by cloning this repo?

    http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-octave/octave.git;a=summary

Is there a way to see what changes you've made to the packaging? Or
should I make my own diffs?

Is the quality of this packaging good? Are you making sure you follow
Debian policy? Will people on various Ubuntu architectures not face
problems with this packaging breaking their Octave-Forge packages? Are
you pushing your changes back to Debian?

While I applaud the enthusiasm of following Octave development, I
would prefer if there was a very clear way to indicate that this is a
development, unstable, experimental, broken version, and if you're
using it, that's because you want to participate in Octave
development.

Is it possible to make this PPA private or less prominent?

- Jordi G. H.