Octave reputation

[Søren Hauberg]

Hi,
  I was just talking to one of my professors about how much more 
wonderful Octave is compared to Matlab. And he made the following 
statements against octave:

1) Octave isn't developed any more.
2) Octave doesn't have any of the toolboxes that matlab has.

Now both of these statements are completely wrong which I told him, but 
that's not the point. The point is that people (I've heard these 
arguments several times before) _think_ these statements are correct.
  I'm guessing that statement 1 is because there hasn't been a stable 
release in years. Octave 3.0 will fix that (yay!).
  I don't really know why Octave-forge is unknown.
  Anyway, I'm writing this mail to ask how we should avoid people 
making these statements in the future? The way I see it, we should

1) Have stable releases more often (after 3.0 of course).
2) Put more visible links to Octave-Forge on the Octave website.

Anyway, I just want to let out some steam. I get really annoyed when 
people avoid Octave simply because of its reputation.

Søren