This is addressed primarily to anyone on this list who is a math
educator or a sysadmin in an educational instution, but may be of
interest to others with an interest in improving the debian standards
for packaging software.

I recently reported the following to debian:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=842305

Because sometimes debian will be more responsive if a bug report
reflects more than a single user's experience and frustration, I
invite anyone on the list who has experienced this issue to add their
comment there.

Likewise, I invite any debian sysadmin for whom this type of issue is
a frustration to decide whether that venue is appropriate for
commenting and advancing how debian packages software.

Two caveats:

1] There's always a judgement call in these type of bug reports of
whether the issue should be fobbed off to upstream. This bug report
includes five components, some clearly only for debian, and others
ideally for upstream ... if upstream is a responsive actor.

2] It's not my intent for this bug report to be some excuse to
`pile-on' about the more general issue of packaging standards. There
needs to be a discussion about that, in a more general forum, and
that's legitimately part of the bug report, but turning the bug report
into a procy for the more general issue might just end up kill any
aciton on the specific package, which is the principal point of the
bug report.

--
hkp://keys.gnupg.net
CA45 09B5 5351 7C11 A9D1 7286 0036 9E45 1595 8BC0