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AM Report for Holger Levsen



[slightly edited repeat of the mail to FrontDesk]

Hi *,

I recommend Holger Levsen be granted a developer account. 

His preferred account name is <holger@debian.org>, with mail being
forwarded to <debian@layer-acht.org>. His gpg key id is 0xAC583520.

Mail and IRC logs are attached.

1. Identification and Background
--------------------------------

Holger's key, 0xAC583520, is signed by:

 sig!         7E7B8AC9 2006-03-25  Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org>
 sig!         9DE1EEB1 2005-09-10  Marc Brockschmidt <Marc.Brockschmidt@credativ.de>
 sig!      X  68FD549F 2004-07-12  Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>
 sig!3     X  29982E5A 2004-06-02  Steve Langasek <vorlon@dodds.net>
 sig!         DD9B9910 2006-08-24  Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>
 sig!3        AB9B66FD 2005-04-01  Thomas Lange <lange@debian.org>

among many other Debian developers. I've met Holger at both DebConf 5
in Helsinki and DebConf 6 in Mexico, as did many other developers, and
can confirm he's a real person, who's passionate about contributing to
free software and Debian.

Holger was advocated by Thomas Lange, whom Holger has assisted with
FAI maintenance for some time now. I had the opportunity to speak with
Thomas in January 2006 at linux.conf.au and he was happy to re-endorse his
advocacy from May 2005.

I took the opportunity to ask a couple of people Holger had worked with
on Debian stuff for their opinion. Joey Hess, in regards to the talk on
d-i at DebConf 5 that he and Holger co-presented, was fairly positive
as to Holger's contributions that he was aware of as at 30th August 2005.

Andreas Schuldei commented on Holger's involvement in assisting with
the organisation of DebConfs 3, 4 and 5 on the 31st of August 2005:

    I have worked with holger for debconf3, 4 and 5. Over the years i
    noticed an increase of planning and forsight, up to the point where
    he was able to carry a good deal of responsibility for debconf5 and
    plan ahead much better. He still took on too much work, but noticed
    that and had no problem to delegate stuff to others.

    He has a way of de-escalating things and finding well working
    compromises for all people involved. He helps in practical ways and
    is willing to do work that others would leave behind undone since
    it is not prestigious or so. All that makes him a pleasent person
    to work with in a team. I can not think of a reason that would
    disqualify him for debian.

As at 17th Sep 2006, Holger's describes himself thus:

    I'm a 33 year old freelancer living in Hamburg, Germany. I've
    been using Debian since 1996, after a very brief period of using
    SuSE. So I'm running Debian stable as primary (and mostly only)
    OS on my desktop since the first debian release :) Before that I
    used AmigaOS and ran a BBS with it.

    During the end of the nineties until the early 2000s I was involved in
    a community computer project to educate people about using computers
    (running Debian), free software and privacy in the internet age.
    Besides the technical quality of the distribution its commitment
    to free software and its social contract were the reasons we chose
    debian.

    In 2001 I got a job at a consulting company where I was responsible
    for the linux infrastructure which I completly migrated to Debian and
    managed with FAI (Fully Automatic Installation, a package in Debian).
    This company, HBT, then paid my trips to debconf3 and 4, where I
    really got involved in Debian:

    Since debconf4 I take part in organizing DebConf, first by
    administrating the conference computers with FAI, and since debconf5
    I have also been leading the video team. For DebConf6 I have also
    been doing various other stuff, and as DebConf in my opinion is very
    productive and fun, I intend to stay involved.

    After debconf3 I became more involvement in FAI, first with submitting
    bugs and some patches, then starting the IRC channel #fai. Currently
    I'm mostly helping Thomas in Debian policy issues and I also (still)
    maintain the fai-kernels package. My goal is to have that package
    removed until the release of etch (and fai using the normal debian
    kernels).

    As FAI is a tool for sysadmins but also has capacities for
    customisation on a higher level, I followed CDDs development and
    became involved in debian-edu, because I believe education is a way
    to shape teh future.

    For debian-edu I maintain two packages, tuxtype and tuxmath and also
    act as a ftpmaster. My current goal is to revive the powerpc port,
    which should be followed by amd64.

    I also participate a bit in Debian Installer development, but not
    as much as I like.

    In general I'm also very interested in QA work, but as a QA measure
    for myself I have decided to focus more on the stuff I allready do :)
    That is DebConf, FAI, DebianEdu and hopefully I'll also find some
    time for powerpc in D-I.

2. Philosophy and Procedures
----------------------------

Holger is familiar with the Social Contract and Debian Free Software
Guidelines, as well as general procedures on how to operate within Debian
such as the DMUP and appropriate methods to manage and use gpg securely.

As well as general maintenance tasks, Holger's participation in
recording and publishing video of DebConf presentations has required
him to take serious consideration of licensing and DFSG-freeness issues
beyond the ordinary. Holger announced the Debian "meetings-archive" on
debian-devel-announce on the 27th September 2005 (in a post sponsored by
Andreas Barth). The success of these endeavours have resulted in Holger
being invited to present at the Foundations of Open Media Software
conference held last week in Sydney Australia. In the application for
funding Holger's travel costs, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote to the linux-aus
list:

    The aim of this grant application is to sponsor the trip of Holger
    Levsen (http://layer-acht.org/) to FOMS. Holger is one of the key
    organisers of the video recordings at FOSDEM, at debconf since 2004
    and now also a organiser of debconf.

    Holger has made it possible that debconf's talk videos are available
    in a timely manner and streamed live. He has set up reliable
    infrastructure and can tell a tale of success unparalleled with open
    media software. He has also developed tools to support these tasks
    and publshed them as open source software.

    With this grant, Holger will come to Australia and attend FOMS, he
    will also stay on for LCA and help out with the video recordings at
    LCA, and Holger has offer to give a talk at SLUG.

      -- Silvia Pfeiffer, 9 Dec 2006
         Message-ID: <2c0e02830612081521o30574245r3dd6d051144bc5b1@mail.gmail.com>
         http://lists.linux.org.au/archives/linux-aus/2006-December/msg00054.html

I believe this is a demonstration of Holger's successful efforts at
advancing the cause of free software in ways beyond the norm.

I believe Holger has demonstrated a good understanding of how to work
within Debian and with Debian developers, and his extensive involvement
in DebConf over the past years even without being acknowledged as a
developer is a good demonstration of his willingness to jump in and be
productively involved in whatever way he can.

In addition to this, over the course of his new-maintainer application,
Holger has demonstrated a good degree of constructive patience in the
latter half of last year, waiting for me to finalise and submit his
application, limiting his reaction to delays from my side to regular
reminders and offers of assistance, along with very occasionally
encouraging others to also try prodding me.

In addition, Holger has been willing to politely disagree and justify
his opinion when asked leading questions or his opinion is challenged,
including when that's done by someone with the ability to make life
awkward for him (in this case his AM).

I believe Holger is easily able to work within Debian, both in cooperating
with other developers even in spite of disagreements, and in working
within imposed constraints from the social contract, difficulties in
relying on volunteers, or the various policies Debian has adopted in
various areas.

3. Tasks and Skills
-------------------

Holger has been involved in:

    * maintaining FAI, in particular managing fai-kernels and helping
      that be merged into the standard kernel packaging

    * helping organise DebConf and other Debian meetings, in particular
      recording them and publishing those recordings

    * supporting and ftpmastering the debian-edu repository

    * contributing to d-i

I believe the endorsements quoted above are more than sufficient evidence
of Holger's contributions to date.

Holger has demonstrated a good detailed technical understanding of FAI
and what it takes to be involved in its development and maintenance,
including an understanding of development tools such as patch, make,
the bug tracking system, and so forth. Likewise, he appears to have a
good understanding of what he doesn't know and how to find documentation
covering that information, as well as good contacts with other developers.

Formal acceptance as a developer will allow Holger to become more
directly involved in FAI maintenance, be more officially involved in
DebConf organisation as a formal delegate should that be useful, and
possibly help to integrate debian-edu into Debian more directly. Beyond
that, Holger hopes to become more involved in QA work, and has already
become involved in administration of the piuparts debian.org box, which
has required special handling since he is not currently a DD.

Cheers,
aj

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