On 4 May 2011 15:23, Scott Kitterman
<debian@kitterman.com> wrote:
That depends on what you mean by 'issue'. I think exactly the issues that
concern some people in Debian about packages of 'poor quality' being generated
in an uncontrolled PPA system are happening with regularity in Ubuntu.
Although it doesn't happen every week or anything, it's happened more often
than I can recall that someone files a bug in Ubuntu about broken PPA packages
done by some random non-developer. I believe Debian is quite correct to be
concerned about the potential for user confusion and damage to Debian's
reputation for high quality work.
I don't personally see this as an issue, I think it is clear that Ubuntu hosted PPAs are not controlled by Ubuntu, and as such the quality may vary widely. If you don't trust the person making the archive, don't use it. If the files look seriously old, don't use it. As for bug reports, being filled at at the wrong place, this will always be an issue with or without the PPAs.
Also I believe anybody can already get an account and upload files to alioth - I don't believe we have a problem with poor quality files being uploaded by random developers. Or if this is an issue, maybe we should restrict alioth to developers only too?
I personally use my Ubuntu PPA for my Django based libraries; I don't think it is reasonable to put every Django application/library I develop immediately in Debian main, but this does not imply that the quality is lacking in these packages.
It makes sense to have a central system everyone can use, manually setting up private repositories that support automatic uploads, autobuilding, etc, is a reasonably complicated task, using time that could be better spent on improving the quality of the packages.