New Maintainers
This is a summary of the AM report for Week Ending 01 Aug 2004.
9 applicants became maintainers.
Nicolas Duboc <nduboc>
"Who am I ? Well, I'm currently a computer science engineer, working in
Sophia-Antipolis (on the French Riviera).
I installed my first GNU/Linux system (a Slaskware) in 1998 from a
demo-cdrom bundled with a magazine. I have been using GNU/Linux as my
main system since then.
Debian is surely the distribution that fits best my way of using and
feeling an OS.
Having used Debian for four years, I had always known that, one
day, I would participate in the Debian project. When the zile package was
orphaned, I decided to adopt this software I use every day.
[...]
After a so long time using free software, I fully understand the
reasons and the advantages of the Social Contract. I totally approve
this contract since this is already the way I think.
I have decided to contribute to the Debian project firstly because I
want to improve software I use (yes, I know this is egoistic, but it is
true not only for me ;-) and to give back to a community which has
given to me a lot (I have learned most of what I know about computers
from free software)."
A google search shows his personal homepage at
http://www.duboc.net/nicolas which includes page for his Debian work.
Alexandre Fayolle <fayolle>
"I've been using Debian since 1994, for a long time on my own personnal
computer, and for the past 4 years as a part time sysadmin in the
company I co-founded, Logilab which is a strong advocate of Open
Source software (see http://www.logilab.org/) and invests a lot in the
O.S community, especially in the Python world. Open Source software is
important to me, because it means that everyone can have access to the
tools, and can tune the tools to suit their need.
I use Debian because of the high quality of the packages and because
of the excellent upgrade support between successive versions of the
distribution. This is of utmost importance to me. The huge choice of
packaged software is also very important to me, as an individual, and
as an IT professionnal, because I know that most major free software
projects have been packaged for Debian, which is great to know when I
design a solution for a customer.
If I can become a DD, I intent to maintain a number of python-related
packages (the ones that I already maintain, and a number of other
useful packages that I use on a daily basis), and help the Debian
python support as much as I can (participate on the debian-python
mailing list, help python package maintainers fix bugs, sponsor other
python-packages maintainers).
I already maintain the python-xml package which I took over from
Jerome Marant a year and a half ago. I also maintain the python-4suite
package, though I admit I have some problems with this one since
upstream has not released anything but alphas and betas in a long time
and the current package is not very useable. I also packaged
python-psyco which entered debian last summer."
Wesley Landaker <wjl>
"Eventually, Linux became my main operating system. A big push here was
that the technical "community" I'd always belonged to moved to it from
OS/2. I later realized I was basically in "free software" community all
along--we developed code together, improved and shared it, always
released software with source code (otherwise, what good was it?)--we
just never had given it a name.
[...]
Well, that ended up being a bit long-winded. In summary, I'm an engineer
with a long history of supporting Free Software and community-based
software development. I've found Debian to align almost perfectly with
my goals to further the cause of freedom through technical and social
means."
Jim Meyering <meyering>
"I have been maintaining the 90 programs in the GNU fileutils, shellutils
and textutils packages (now known as the GNU coreutils) since 1992.
I wrote many of those programs, and rewrote and enhanced many others,
as well as much of the portability and testing framework. I am also
a co-maintainer of the GNU packages: autoconf, automake, gnulib."
David Nusinow <dnusinow>
"I'm currently a first year PhD student studying molecular biology
and living in Boston. I first started using Debian when potato was
released, and I haven't looked back since then. I currently maintain
pdb2dhl, configure-debian, and pwm, and I have recently ITP'd a game
called epiar. I also bounce around quite a bit, doing miscellaneous
work wherever I see a need for it, including d-i and the XSF. I love
the simple idea of a community of people voluntarily coming together
to build something like Debian, and I'm incredibly proud to be a
part of it."
Keith Packard <keithp>
"I have been a free software developer for a while now. I had my own
PDP-11 and hacked on Unix from v6 through BSD 2.9. I hacked on gdb
and gcc in the early years, developing the NS 16032 support for gdb
which is probably still shipped with the gdb releases. In 1988, I
went to work for the MIT X Consortium where I participated in the
development of X11 for four years.
I plan on continuing to develop the X Window System and ensure that
the software meets the needs of the Debian community. I am currently
working closely with the Debian X maintainers and expect to adopt some
of those Debian packages, especially those for which I am the primary
author.
I have been working with Branden Robinson to identify licensing
problems in the current X window system sources. I plan on ensuring
that the core X packages remain DFSG-free by soliciting license
changes, deleting offending code or spliting packages apart and moving
pieces to non-free.
As the upstream maintainer for a number of these packages, I believe I
can provide unique value to the Debian project in it's goal to ship
clearly licensed software in compliance with the Debian Free Software
Guidelines.
I admit to being a relative Linux newbie; I first installed Slackware
2.0 with kernel 1.1.18 around 1995 or so. I had dismissed it several
years earlier as a cheap minix knock-off, and continued to use Unix
workstations. It took the efforts of a friend to demonstrate the
utility of a system for which full source code was available, and from
there it was straight downhill through Slackware to RedHat and finally
Debian where I've stayed ever since.
I can't quite find a good answer to why I want to write open source
software; it's like asking why I want to spend time breathing. As to
why I want to volunteer with the Debian project, that's partially
pragmatic -- other developers have convinced me that it's far easier
to get the kind of Debian packages you want for your own software if
you just build them yourself. It's also a sense of responsibility; I
lean on the efforts of hundreds of other Debian developers and feel
like I should carry some of the load, at least the parts that I'm
capable of."
Martin Quinson <mquinson>
Martin maintains po4a and quilt.
Alexander Sack <asac>
"I am a 26 year old German, resident of Hamburg.
I finished school in 1997 & served the state as a clinic assistant in
a mental institution for a year.
After that I started to study computer-science & economics. Since the
very beginning of my study I worked for a few companies as a software
engineer. My technological focus is on distributed enterprise
applications for internet based financial services (first in C++
leveraging CORBA, but soon J2EE).
Currently I am still at university, working on my master thesis."
Sebastian Henschel <shensche>
"my first gnu/linux install was some kind of slackware in 1995, but i
dropped it, because space on my harddisk was precious and my dos/os/2
combination did well. in 96 i installed my first suse and finally
converted to debian in 99. i never got involved into any
community-thing, because there was always so much other stuff to do.
i made some visits to the ccc and the c-base, if you know them, but
never got really attached to them.
at least, i am known as a free software advocate within my friends.
nevertheless, i had the urge to "do something" for the community and
the whole world and looked out for packages, which were up for
adoption and i used by myself for a couple of months.
finally, i found one (xpenguins-applet) and applied for maintainership.
so, first of all, i want to be a package maintainer. i already have
another package in mind, which i want to take: gtk-engines-cleanice2
and the upcoming xpenguins-applet for gnome2. i really like gnome2. :)
because i had worked as a programmer and system administrator before,
i could also think of helping the ftp/www-masters as well.
i want to volunteer, because now i really have the time to give
something back to the community (in surplus to the occasional purchase
of cds).
i like debian because of its package management, because of its
somewhat democratic structure, its grassroots-feel, because everyone is
involved.
i like the way bugs are handled via the bts, i like to take part in
making the "community"-distribution be the best one in the place."
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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