New Maintainers
This is a summary of the AM reports for the first semester of 2006.
36 applicants became maintainers.
Marcela Tiznado <mlt>
I've started using Gnu/Linux on 1998. Im an active member of CaFeLug
(Capital Federal GNU/Linux User Group) since 2002. I've worked on some
projects like a Wifi Lan along Buenos Aires using Free Software and Free
Contents, Debian introductory talks, InstallFests, Solution days, etc. I
like being in contact with people which its new at Free Software.
I want to join Debian, to give back some work to the Comunity. It's the
distribution I use and I've been using for long time. I'm specially
interested on working on some topics like the Web Application Policy,
cause most of them are messy. I've started an alioth project about, I
will keep working on that.
Why working on Debian and not with other distro? Well, I like very much
the way its organized and how it works.
Dominic Hargreaves <dom>
My interest in Linux is largely as a sysadmin - I have been using
Linux since aroud 1998 and extensively since 2000 as a student. Since
2002 I have been a professional sysadmin in academia, and recently, an
ISP environment. More generally I enjoy the use of free software because
of the empowerment, choice and value it provides compared to
proprietory systems.
I became interested in Debian in early 2001 and have been using it ever
since, exclusively now at home and work. I value its sheer range of
packages and reputation it has for high quality, and I would like to
contribute to this. I am strongly in favour of keeping Debian a high
quality distribution that produces stable releases.
As my main contribution to Debian to date I have packaged a CGI
application (and many associated perl modules, some of which have
already been uploaded to Debian) that I'm involved with. When the
application matures sufficiently I plan to upload it to Debian too.
I have also adopted an orphaned package and aim to diligently report
bugs in the distribution whenever possible.
I have also taken an interest in the testing-security team, and although
since changing jobs haven't had much time to contribute, I helped
maintain their database of security issues in sarge prior to release.
I would like to continue to develop packages for Debian as well as
undertake general QA and bug-tracking issues as time permits if I am
made a Debian developer.
Kari Pahula <kaol>
I am currently a math major in the University of Turku, in Finland,
nearing graduation.
My initial contact with GNU/Linux came in around 1997 when I installed
Redhat on my computer. My initial interest in free software was
technical, but I soon discovered the philosophical side of it and
found it agreeable. I moved to use Debian around 1999 with Slink,
largely attracted by Debian's community based developement model.
To me, being part of a community is a major motivation for working on
free software. I find the immediate feedback and equality
invigorating.
My contributions to Debian have so far primarily consisted of package
maintenance and sending the occasional patch to other maintainers. I
largely intend to keep on doing the same in the future.
Rudy Godoy <rudy>
Hi, I've been involved in free software since 1997. I'm founding
member and currently on board of directors for APESOL[0] (Free
Software Association) here in PerÃ. Also started DebianPeru[1] user
group last year (2004).
When I learned about Debian Project and its philosophy I found that
I shared the vision, since my interest for free software are in
social and philosophical but also in technical matters. So I started
to use and then contribute to Debian since around 2001-2002 and
advocating it on the places I went to give talks. It actually gave
good results over here and Debian is gaining more adoption and
presence.
My work in Debian is mostly focused on localisation to spanish,
working as translator of different pieces of documentation and
software like d-i, debconf templates and in charge of DWN
translation coordination since 2003. I've also maintain packages on
the archive and work with the Xfce team and Debian Jr
subproject. Lately I've been focusing more on quality and software
testing and trying to help on its improvement. On the other side
I've also been part of the organisation team for DebConf4 and
currently helping on DebConf6 team.
My interest on the future are to focus more on quality and better
integration between the different kind of software that Debian
ships. Also is in my interest to help to make Debian to have more
adoption from ISVs and enterprise by cooperating with them, and also
standards certifications like LSB.
0- http://www.apesol.org
1- http://www.debianperu.org
Riccardo Setti <giskard>
I'm Riccardo Setti and I'm 18 years old. I live in Italy and I study at
the secondary school.
One years ago I did my first installation of linux, obviously Debian. In
december 2003 I tried to build my first package needing it for
my work. Since this moment I'am interesting about the development of
debian.
For Debian I have translated some documents and I am the maintainer of
some packages, and this is what I wish to do in debian (for now).
Paul Waite <paulwaite>
Well regarding myself, I am 48 and have been writing software in various
forms for about 30-odd years. This started with PL/1 on an IBM-360
mainframe at Durham University, UK and then 'C' at the same place. As
the 'personal computer' came along, I graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics,
and went down to Wembley in London, Uk to work on Laser Optics. My
passion for software found various outlets there, where I designed and
built things like single-board computers (building hardware was also a
passion!), and wrote the OS for it in Z-80 assembler.
Since 1999 I've been the 6th Director of a small IT company called
Catalyst IT here in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. I have been
using Php almost exclusively for some years, with PostgreSQL, to build
web applications, and over that time I have built a development platform
which is, essentially, the distillation of all of those efforts. It has been
developed as a platform for other developers, and I want to share it, such
as it is, with anyone who wants to build web applications in Php.
Jurij Smakov <jurij>
I'm a 31-years old postdoctoral researcher, currently working at
the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of California
Irvine. A major part of my work is development of custom software
for computer simulations of physical problems. Early in my graduate
studies I've found that open-source software provides all essential
tools for that, so I have been using it ever since.
[...]
So, at the moment there are a few areas I'm actively involved in
in Debian. I'm the maintainer of the torrus package, member of the
Debian kernel team, and (since Sparc hardware appears to magically
accumulate in my vicinity :-) a sparc porter. As there are not too
many people actively working on sparc port these days, I'd say that
my primary goal in Debian is to keep the sparc port up and running
to the best of my abilities.
Ben Hutchings <benh>
I have been programming since 1983 and started publishing freeware about
10 years later. At that time I was somewhat aware of free software (I
had seen RMS in TV documentaries) but I didn't feel able to get involved
in it, as I lacked an Internet connection and there didn't seem to much
that would run on my computer.
Once I bought my first PC in 1997 I installed Red Hat Linux and started
making minor changes to it, beginning that day with the addition of my
network card's IDs to the appropriate driver. I contributed patches to
Linux, PINE (though I realise that's not strictly free), trn and various
other programs. A year or so later I had had enough of the Red Hat
distribution and switched to Debian.
Around the same time I began my professional programming career and in
the time since then my programming efforts have mostly been directed
towards my work. I have made use of the Boehm garbage collector on two
separate projects and my respective employers were happy for me to send
changes back, including both bug fixes and new features. However, for
the most part I worked on proprietary software. At home, however, I
have used Debian almost exclusively since 1998 and have felt that I
should be contributing back to it.
In the last few years I became socially involved with local Debian
developers and users, participated in BSPs, and so became more familiar
with Debian packaging and development infrastructure. In 2005 I found a
good software project that was surprisingly absent from Debian, and
packaged that as sgt-puzzles. I believe I have done a reasonable job of
keeping this package up to date and dealing with bug reports relating to
it.
I attended Debconf 5, which made me very enthusiastic about getting more
involved. When I found that there was no plan to compile the video
recordings for DC5 onto DVD, I resolved to make this happen, and did so
over the next few months, using free software and images, and releasing
everything necessary to reproduce my build process. I found some parts
of this sufficiently frustrating that I am now working on a new
front-end for creating DVD videos (provisionally called WebDVD), which I
will propose to include in Debian in due course. I also found and
submitted fixes for various bugs in dvdauthor. I will be a member of
the video team for this year's conference.
While I was at Debconf, Steve McIntyre suggested I do some work on
mkisofs and debian-cd to speed up the Debian CD/DVD production process.
This is ongoing but some of my changes to mkisofs are already included
in the Debian package. Steve also encouraged me to apply to NM.
Carlo Segre <segre>
I am a Professor of Physics at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). I
have been at IIT for 22 years now, starting as an Assistant Professor. My
Ph.D. is on Condensed Matter Physics and I have been using computers for
various purposes since the early 1970s. I worked as a systems programmer
as an undergraduate and I did a lot of assembly language programming for
laboratory data acquisition and control systems using the Motorola 6809
processor and the OS/9 operating system, a real time Unix-like system.
I have also done a lot of FORTRAN programming including porting and
maintaining programs for Crystallographic Structure analysis from VAX to
PC and finally to Linux. This is mostly what I do now as far as coding
goes.
My research centers around using synchrotron x-ray sources for the study
of the structures of materials. I also am Deputy Director and operations
Manager for the Materials Research Collaborative Access Team
(http://mrcat.iit.edu) which is located at the Advanced Photon Source at
Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois. The beamline uses a
data acquisition and control system, MX (http://mx.iit.edu) that I have
been funding the development of for the past 10 years. THis system runs
on many platforms but at the MR-CAT beamline, we use mostly Debian Linux
machines. My research is now focussing on local structural studies of
fuel cell catalysts, corrosion studies of steels, nucleation and growth of
crystals of small organic molecules and local structure in multiferroic
materials. If you would like to know more about these kinds of things, I
will be happy to oblige.
I have been using Debian since version 0.99 in 1995 or so. Before that we
put Slackware on our departmental Computer Cluster but Debian immediately
offered us the ability to upgrade without completely reinstalling
everytime and having to write out 50 floppy disks or so. I have been
using Debian ever since and I have, at various times been responsible for
up to 30 workstations running Debian Linux. More recently, I have been
able to have a sysadmin working for the research group.
About 2 years ago, I decided that I wanted to make some of the scientific
programs that I use available in a form that would be easily
redistributable to any of the computers in my research group or the
department. This meant that I had to learn to make Debian packages. I
have a private repository with a number of these packages in it now.
These mostly include programs for x-ray diffraction and spectroscopy data
analysis and other programs that we develop in my research group.
Faidon Liambotis <paravoid>
My name is Faidon Liambotis and I'm 19 years old. I was born and
currently live in Athens, Greece.
I'm currently studying Computer Science at the Technological
University of Athens (http://www.teiath.gr/).
I'm also participating as a volunteer to the local wireless community
network (Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network/AWMN,
http://www.awmn.net/) where I made my first attempts on packaging
software for Debian - with the purpose of mass-deploying them to the
routers and servers of the network.
I'm mostly interested in the development and documentation of network
related programs although my work absolutely isn't (and won't be)
limited on that.
I strongly support the fact that Debian wants to be "Universal
Operating System" and that -along with the fact that it's a developed
by a community and isn't controlled by a company- are my motivations
for getting involved with Debian.
My goals are obvious, to help in making Debian a better OS by
packaging software for it, reporting and fixing bugs and documenting
things while keeping it Free and community-based.
Free Ekanayaka <free>
I'm undergraduate student in mathematics and I'm currently
collaborating with Media Innovation Unit - Firenze Tecnologia [0], a
centre dealing, among the others, with research in the audio field,
its connections with Free Software. I'm in charge of developing and
maintaining the AGNULA/DeMuDi [1] project.
All persons employed at Media Innovation Unit have a contract
explicitly stating that any work produced is to be licensed as Free
Software (typically GPL) or Free Content (typically Creative Commons).
[0] http://www.miu-ft.org (sorry English version not available yet)
[1] http://www.agnula.org (or http://demudi.alioth.debian.org, in preparation)
Rene van Bevern <rvb>
I am René van Bevern, born on 16 Nov 1985 in Thuringia, a state in
former East Germany.
I started using GNU/Linux in August 1998. I happened to become
a Debian user with a CD snapshot of the not-yet-released Potato
in July 2000.
I respect the DFSG and do advocate it publicly. I've also
successfully helped one of my upstream authors to choose some
more appropriate licenses [1].
I've started programming at the age of 12 using Power Basic and
now write (not fluently in all) in C, C++, Objective C,
Objective Caml, Ruby, Perl, Pascal, and Common Lisp -- the last
one being my favourite language and one of my commitments in
Debian.
Besides packaging in general, I decided to help making Debian a
better place for Common Lisp developers, as already Richard
Stallman stated in the GNU manifesto that Lisp besides C shall
be the system programming language. We of course know that they
are unlikely to reach equal popularity. ;-)
I am involved in CL-Debian [2], having some of my own packages
[3], helping to fix bugs in the other ones [4] and documenting
Common Lisp in Debian (e.g. [5]).
Thanks to my sponsors Norbert Tretkowski and Peter Van Eynde,
who are always very responsive, I have fun doing work in Debian.
Besides programming I started writing articles and news on linux
related topics at the age of 13. I also write for printed
magazines occasionally.
There is not much to tell of me if I leave the topic of
computers: I like bicycling a lot, served an intensive care
unit in a hostpital (instead of serving the army) and am just
starting studying information science. The human languages I
know are German, English and Esperanto.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=311420
[2] http://cl-debian.alioth.debian.org/
[3] http://cl-debian.alioth.debian.org/repository/rvb/
[5] http://cl-debian.alioth.debian.org/clid/clid.html/
Guilherme Pastore <gpastore>
I am a Brazilian high school student who has been interested in
computers since the age of 4, approximately. I started programming when
I was 9 (although I was interested in that before, I had nowhere to get
useful information from), but unfortunately did not get to know free
software until 3 years later, most likely due to the lack of Internet
access, when some comments (which I later found out to be ridiculous FUD
spreading) regarding "Linux" systems were published in a magazine and
got me interested.
..]
What I intend to work on once I have an account is somewhat complicated
to list, because I feel eager to help in any area which has problems
(e.g. is overloaded). I would probably work harder on the Debian GNOME
Team, which is currently lacking manpower, as work will be much more
efficient if I do not have to wait for weeks for a sponsor. Also, Debian
QA, which has an extremely important and quite complicated and demanding
job, in my opinion, and visibly could use some help. Finally, something
I hope I will always find time to help with is the sponsorship program,
as there are skilled people outside the project who are willing to
contribute and have hard times trying to find sponsors for their
packages, and the New Maintainer process, which I have been looking at
for some years now, and could be improved in a number of ways (although
neither trivial nor obvious), mainly by having more Application
Managers.
Agney Lopes Roth Ferraz <agney>
My name is Agney Lopes Roth Ferraz, I live in brazil, I am 23 years old.
I am studing computer cience at UNI-BH (www.unibh.br, state of Minas
Gerais, in Belo Horizonte) but I come transferred from computer engeniering
at UFES(www.ufes.br). And on my studies I am planning to study next year on
New Jersey, Montclair(www.montclair.edu - computer cience).
[...]
My first contact with free software was in UFES in 1997 when they put linux
on laboratories, because the could not pay microsoft license anymore. The
boy who installed the lab installed on all computers the Conectiva
distribution. But when you try to ask some doubt for him, he used to ignore
us. So in a very beatiful day, another guy called alexandre (aka mcgiver)
seeing that I was interested in linux called me and offers to help with
learning. So he introduce me to debian world. I didn't know, but on
laboratories of masters (the title that you try after graduation) he
installed debian on all machines, and he was so patient with me and show me
everything I want. They borrow me the Debian CD. teach me about apt-get and
a lot of stuff. After a time, I used to spend all my free time helping him
with the network configuration and security. Two monts after they offers me
a job at the laboratories. On this time a learn a lot the debian policy and
the philosofy of free software. But didn't stay much time there. six months
after the univesity offers me a job on the main datacenter ( I don't know
how to say this in english but this datacenter is where they put students
history classes and other stuff releated to administration of university).
I stay working there still I moved from other state. I used to work there
with administration of servers (AIX, Solaris and of course some Debian
machines that me and mcgiver install).
At this moment I am not working because I am studing english a lot. As I
said on december I will move to clifton on new jersey to finish my
graduation.
My last work was on my university, supporting the network
(www.info.unibh.br). I was almost entering the security team, but I have
others priorities now. I think that I write too much about me. If you want
to know more, ask me what.
My interest for Debian is big. First because I think that is the best school
for learn about computers. Second because I am so involved with digital
inclusion of people who haven't access yet. My local debian group
(www.linuxbh.org) make a lot of events to promote debian. We talk about
debian, the philosofy, and install debian on machines that users bring for
us.
We try not only to give access for people who do not have, but give
condictions for these people to produce more knowledge.
I think that debian project is a good oportunity to really make programs as
I like. making the program like as a picture, like as an art. I love the
social contract, cause the meaning of it is the kind of idea that I have. It
is my life philosofy. I believe that you can do a better word doing what we
like to do. I think that the thinking of stallman about apples and ideas is
the same that I think. Resuming: i love the debian project, the debian
policy and the philosofy of debian. It does not have a why... I love it
because I like it. I used debian for a long time (IMO) and now is time to
give my contribution to others beginers. Not only becoming a DD. I am in
other projects for answer users questions, write docs about applications and
show the project for the comunity in general.
Miguel Gea Milvaques <xerakko>
I'm a Mathematics bachelor and teacher in a Spanish Secondary School.
I was researching image and video compression with Discrete Wavelet
Transform in 1993 and i needed to create an implementation. After
a lot of problems with memory management on MS-DOS, I tried a Slackware
Linux with a "new" kernel version 0.99, which solved all my problems.
This "free" help got me to release my own application (TutoriaPHP)
under the GPL as my first contribution to free software as gratefulness.
[...]
Within Debian, I'm interested in maintaining my packages and working on new
Debian specific packages, specially dbconfig-common.
I also want to continue to help in the #debian-mentors-es channel, which is
a place to help people to create new packages. I'm sure I'm going to find
a lot of new projects on my way.
Andree Leidenfrost <andree>
I am an IT professional mainly working as an SAP consultant in the
areas Basis and Development. Also, I have been doing Linux and Windows
administration work for almost a decade and have done programming in
various languages over the years including scientific programming in
FORTRAN and web development.
I'm an expatriate German who has been happily living in Sydney,
Australia since the middle of 1999.
I believe a world with more OpenSource software would be a slightly
better world. My commitment to Debian is my little contribution to
making this happen.
Ognyan Kulev <ogi>
[...]
In 1998, I started working in the place I studied (Faculty of Mathematics and
Informatics). There I learnt a lot more about Linux, and free software. In the
same year, I decided that Debian was my distribution of choice, mainly because
it's community-driven effort that expects from its users to somewhat participate
in advancing Debian. And it's all devoted to free software! I started to
support a Linux account server in my faculty (debian.fmi.uni-sofia.bg) and I'm
still doing this.
[...]
As Debian Developer, I will be interested in the advancement of Debian GNU/Hurd.
~ I would like to maintain in Debian my MSc thesis project - ext3fs for the Hurd
<http://debian.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/~ogi/hurd/ext3fs/>. I would like to see Debian
GNU/Hurd as part of the next stable Debian release -- Etch.
There are other Bulgarian projects that I'm part of or interested in and that
need packaging.
Torsten Marek <shlomme>
I started using various flavours of Linux back in the old
millennium, all with varying success and all for a limited time span
only, mostly because I could not adapt from several years of using
of (err, mostly gaming on) Windows or new hardware broke something
in my install. In 2001, I finally switched to SuSE Linux. Having
learned to program before (a bit of C, a bit of C++, too much of
Visual Basic), I soon started to write my own programs. Eventually,
I fell in love with Python, a bond that still holds today.
[...]
In 2003, after I got used to what Debian does different and becoming
an apt-get junkie, I started packaging software (for practice, fun &
own usage). In the summer, I first thought about applying at Debian,
but several major flamewars in debian-devel made me think whether I
really want to put effort and time into Debian. Eventually, I quit
reading debian-devel and got back to work. I started packaging
eric.
As a programmer, I strongly believe in free software - most of my
projects would not have been possible without it at all. As a user,
I like tuning my own workspace to my personal needs (the
much-dreaded freedom *of* choice, not only *from* choice). As for
Debian, I like the development model and the architecture of the
system, that makes a lot of issues many people have (just one:
"Please no external dependencies! External dependencies are bad")
complete non-issues. The effort to make nearly every package to
behave in a standard-compliant way is, in my eyes, even more
important and makes Debian stand out (although I'm not one of the
Linuxers that have used some fifty distros and turn back to Windows
or Slackware all the time, so I can't impress with experience here).
For the near future in Debian (apart from my prepared packages), I'd
like to package some more software like nltk, the Natural language
toolkit for Python, which combines Python (my hobby) with
computational linguistics (my studies) and help out with/create a
group for packaging 0install resp. rox & the like. Furthermore, I'm
sure to be found where Python is involved, both for packaging and
programming new tools.
Sven Mueller <sven>
I studied computer science from 1992 to 2002 at the university of
Dortmund. During that time, I also worked for the department of CS for
about two years IIRC (1993-1995). While working there, I was introduced
to SunOS, Solaris and Linux system administration. At that time,
slackware was about the only usable distribution. While hopping from one
system admin job to the other (till Summer 2000), I got to know various
Linux distributions (the usual suspects, really: RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE
and SLS if anyone remembers that one), but I was never introduced to
Debian and the prospect of using a different package manager than the
one I was used to (RPM) actually kept me away from it. Well until summer
2002 that is. At that time, I started a new job and had to use Debian. I
hated that fact for about a week and than I loved the apt-* and dpkg way
of handling packages. Soon I also had to patch a few packages for
internal use and really liked the ease of doing so.
When I was starting to set up my own new mailserver, I missed a few
packages or found ones which were available to be quite outdated, so I
adopted them (or created them). Most of them just are a way of
installing my own scripts cleanly and keep them in sync across systems,
but the ones which have the potential to be useful to others, are now in
Debian (spampd and nslint, with cyrus22-imaps following relatively soon).
My primary area of interest is certainly the management of servers,
mainly mail servers, so that is where I am (and will be) contributing
packages. However, I will also try to help other new maintainers to get
their packages up to par and hopefully help a few of them to also become
DDs. Apart from that and keeping my packages as up to date and bugfree
as possible, I can't name any goals at the moment.
Erik Schanze <eriks>
I'm 31 years old and study computer science in 8th turn. I live in
Freital near Dresden in Saxony, Germany. Currently I complete my study
by a diploma thesis until end of this year.
[snip non-public]
Debian has been my favourite distribution for almost 3 years. Before
that (since 1998), I tried to use several SuSE versions, but never got
it really to work. Looking back I can say I was missing needed
hardheadedness. ;-)
At the beginning of my study, a new try with SuSE 7.1 was triggered by a
donated box from SuSE to all new students and the class "operating
systems" held by Prof. Lothar Koch, a Unix and Linux expert.
He imparted me the idea of Free Software and started my rapidly growing
interesting in Linux and Free Software (and the ideas behind).
I got a member of our local Linux User Group
(http://lug-dd.schlittermann.de/).
In 2002 I switched over Knoppix to Debian, because I was looking for a
more open and free distribution than SuSE. (I learned to hate YaST ;-)
Around this time Linux became my only OS at home and at university.
In 2003 we (some people of our LUG) started our yearly event
"Linux-Info-Tag Dresden" (http://www.linux-info-tag.de/) at last
weekend in october and we founded the club "Linux-Info-Tag e. V." in
2004 for better organizing. We do this events to propagate the ideas
behind Linux and Free Software to the public. We show what we do and
explain why we do it.
I organize the Debian booth together with Alexander Schmehl every year.
In 2003 I started my activities on Debian to give something back to the
community that give me this great collection of Free Software. First I
read basic documentation like Developers Reference, Debian Policy and
New Maintainer Guide. I was impressed by the strict focus on Free
Software without any sellout; I like it. Debian makes it esay to
contribute in many ways, that encourage me to begin.
The german translation of NM-Guide was outdated, so I did a new one.
http://www.debian.de/doc/maint-guide/
After that I translated some debconf templates to improove the usibility
for Germans. IMO Debian should be widely localized to make it easy for
new users.
http://people.debian.org/~barbier/intl/l10n/unstable/po-debconf/de
I wrote and translate some manpages and tried to provide feedback by
good bug reports.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=submitter&data=schanzi_usenet%40gmx.de
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=submitter&data=schanzi_%40gmx.de
I'm willing to provide some spare time to Debian to give something back
from the great feeling in using this system. "System" means in this
context not only the OS, it also include the easy possibility to live
the idea of Free Software, to learn much about software handling (like
programming, handling of bugs etc.) and working together with other
people on the same goal. Debian let me feel, what "community" means, it
is nice to be a part of it.
I'd like to maintain further packages, do more translations and work on
documentation. If I'm more experienced in packaging, I'd like to
provide some help on debian-mentors and as a sponsor.
Ashley Howes <ashley>
I've been using computers for several years, I started with an Amiga in
the early 1990s. I've been programming since I went to university. I
was introduced to SGI Irix back then whilst working on my Ph.D:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ashley.howes/research/
I then started to experient with Linux, both at home and at work.
However, my interest has grown much more over the past 3 years, and
through my local LUG (http://www.alug.org.uk), I was introduced to
Debian.
I enjoyed using it a lot, was encouraged by the idea behind it, and wanted
to give something back. I am currently looking after the lavaps package,
with my sponsor Daniel Silverstone <daniels@debian.org> performing the
uploads.
In Debian I will continue maintaining lavaps, and add/adopt packages
which I find useful. As my experience grows, I would also like to get
involved in conferences where bugs are fixed, etc.
Stuart Teasdale <sdt>
My name is Stuart Teasdale, and I've been using Linux since 1996. I
started originally using slackware, but changing over to Debian in the
summer of 1998, when hamm was released. Since then I've graduated from
University and ended up in a career as a unix systems administrator at
Oxford University. I use Debian GNU/Linux every day, both at home and at
work, and when a package I use extensively in my work, ganglia-monitor,
was in need of an update I volunteered to take on the package management
from the previous maintainer.
In addition, after many years of being a user and consumer of Debian I
felt it was time to offer my services back to the project. In the short
term I plan to work on packaging, but as I gain experience I'm hoping to
get involved in other aspects of the project, including helping with the
new-maintainer queue.
Qingning Huo <qhuob>
I started using Debian in 2001 when I tried to install Linux on an old
Sparc box. After a while, it became my major operating platform. At my
current job, we develop software on Debian Linux.
I like the Debian philosophy and started contributing to Debian since
2004. I adopted log2mail, created a new package for mrxvt (currently
waiting in the NEW queue), and just started working on libtorrent.
In Debian, I will continue working on these packages, and would like to
get involved with other packages and/or jobs too. My special interests
are of networking and security.
Ricardo Mones <mones>
Well, I'm a future computer science engineer, currently finishing his
degree. Interested in free and open software since I took contact with it
years ago, I've been contributing in my spare (and not so spare) time to
some projects, specially the Sylpheed/Sylpheed Claws mailers. Installing
Debian to do it was one of my wiser decisions ;-)
Lior Kaplan <kaplan>
I'm 22 years old, serving in the Israeli Army Air force computing unit
while learning to my first degree in Computer Science.
About me & Linux / Debian:
I encountered Linux around 1997 when learning about the infrastructure
of websites as a result of my site building interest. I had since used
Linux (mostly on servers).
Later on I had a change of trying Debian and "fall in love" with it, and
it's base principals (community, DFSG...). I also can't forget apt-get
(in the time before everyone got apt4rpm or urpmi).
[...]
My goals as a DD is the help the Israeli / Hebrew speaking users by:
1. Package needed software, like geresh which is a UTF8 editor with BIDI
support.
2. Translate key applications (besides D-I).
3. Advance the BIDI support as part of the I18N efforts.
Santiago José Ruano Rincón <santiago>
I'm a "serious" gnu/linux user since two years. I'm a co-founder of the
Universidad del Cauca GNU/Linux users group. (GLUC,
http://gluc.unicauca.edu.co), and part of DebianColombia
(http://www.debiancolombia.org).
At the moment, I maintain two packages, zaptel and zapata, in the near
future, I hope to work in other packages, specially, those related to
VoIP or those who I use frequently.
I like to bring new people to debian, with a friend, we made a
presentation called "El Proyecto Debian GNU/Linux" for the "2º Congreso
Suroccidental de Software Libre" the past november. I hope to make more
presentations like that.
Alexander Schmehl <tolimar>
I don't know exactly, when I first got in contact with Linux. It must
be somewhere between the release of bo (1997) and hamm (1998) I think.
However: It was a quiete easy story. In those days some friends ane me
played often network games. Since our favourite game "CivNet" crashed
very often, it wasn't that funny it could be.
One of this friend told me about an civilization clone which would need
to install something called "Linux". (Yes: I first installed Linux to
play freeciv.) My fist distribution was Red Hat, installed by that
friend. One week later I forced him to install Debian (I think it was
"bo"), since he changed to Debian GNU/Linux and refused to answer my
questions about "that stinky piece of crab which tries to hide behind an
expensive cap". Two weeks later I learned that it is highly insecure to
run gpm, when you work mostly as root. Especially if you suddenly paste
something like "rm -rf /". Since my friend warned me, to not work as
root and I know how creative he can be when inventing new taunts, I
decided to solve this problem without him, and installed Debian for my
first time with three weeks of Linux experience. The next two weeks I
didn't touched the System anymore, to recover from that trauma.
But I got curious, who does all that work, and why and how. I found out
about Free Software, DFSG and what the difference betwenn »free« and
»free«, and between »project« and a »company« is.
Later I learned to value the possibiltie to fit the system to your
needs, and when I killed my Windows installation a couple of month
later, I didn't care much about it.
So I was a very convenient Debian GNU/Linux User for a while... well...
for a couple of years. I learned, and startet to help other people via
irc and mailing lists. Sometimes I submitted a bug report, but I didn't
did much to pay the communitie back, what I got.
I think it was 2001 or maybe 2002, when I noticed, that you where
searching for volunteers to man the booth at the LinuxTag in Karlsruhe,
and I joined the team. It was quite funny, I learned a lot, and this was
the beginning of my career as the one, who is sometimes called »Debian
Conference and Booth Manager for the German speaking area«. I travelled
to quite some exhibitions, road shows and conferences to repesent the
Debian Project with running boothes and talking about Debian. Sadly I
didn't had time to write reports about all of them.
Somewhere between that I started some translations to german, some
package descriptions, and later the security howto (of which I must
conceed, that my translation is quite outdated at the moment).
All the times I frequently met people, who suggested to start
NM-process. But since I was quite busy the last years, I didn't liked
the idea, that I might be unable to react on bugreports / questions /
whatever in a reasonable time. Since I have more time, I think it's
time to pay something back.
My first package allready got accepted to the debian archive
(tuxracer-extras, adopted from Andreas Tille who is my sponsor and
advocat, too). Looking at the wnpp list, there are some packages, I
whish to take a look at (e.g. the orphaned xfce4 plugins). In any case
I will continue to travell to exhibitons and conferences to represent
Debian, allthough it is often very stressfull, it is allways funny.
Once someone in our Linux User Group said to me, that I can explain
quite good, I should write a book. Since that I plan to write some kind
of "newbie guide to debian including some understandable explanations
how all that computer thingies work) or something similar (of course in
my native language - you allready discovered that my english is not as
good as it could be).
And finally a little bit about me personly: Born 1978 in Frankfurt /
Germany, three sisters, started playing ... hmm ... using computers with
four (an old sinclait QL, which is still somewhere in my fathers
cellar).
Now student of Computer Sciences (subsidiary subjects philosphy) at the
university of Frankfurt, member of different administration boards at
the university.
Morten Werner Olsen <werner>
I am 24 years old, and is about to finish my master degree in Computer
Science within the field of System Administration. I started playing
with Linux on my home network about 7 years ago, but it was in the
beginning of my Computer Science education that I started using
GNU/Linux for as many task as possible. The reason for doing this, was
that I think I learned more from using GNU/Linux and Free Software
than the properitary alternatives. I also try to report bugs I find,
and if I am capable with patches, so the software can be even better.
My first experience with Debian was when I started administrating a
Linux server for a studentgroup which I was member. After a few days
with APT-experience it was no return.. :)
I've been doing the last two years of my education in Trondheim,
Norway, and at a meeting in a local Skolelinux group my interest for
Skolelinux started. But it was at the Skolelinux developer gathering
last summer (the same time and place as Debconf) I was introduced to
the other developers and started helping out with the
development. During the fall 2003 I made slbackup[1] as my student
project, and since January this year, I have been maintaining it in
Debian.
This spring I have improved and maintained the xdebconfigurator
package, packaged and maintained hwinfo[2] and started the Skolelinux
security team which will patch and release new packages of the
software we use that is not a part of Debian stable and forward DSA's
from Debian for packages we think will affect the users of
Skolelinux. I will finish my master theses before 1. July, and hope
to find a job before that (hopefully a job where I can work with and
perhaps contribute to Debian and Free Software).
The reason I want to join Debian is that Debian has for the last years
been the distribution of my heart, and I want to help making it even
better! And as a Skolelinux Developer I think I can help Skolelinux to
reach their goal of fully integrating with Debian (as Debian-Edu)
better as a Debian Developer. The work I will do for Debian the next
months, years or something is package management and
testing/debugging. Later, if needed, I would be happy to help
maintaining the infrastructure.
I spend my (spare)time with supporting and developing Free Software
because I hope that what I do will be useful for others, just as I
benefit from a lot of work already done by others. And I really think
the "create and share" philosophy is great, and is far from enough
used in other parts of our society.
Enrico Tassi <gareuselesinge>
I've first used a GNU/Linux system at the university of Bologna,
six years ago. Here there are a lot of students (and some teachers)
interested in Free Software and GNU/Linux, and I've been "captured" by
this world. I want to volunteer my time for two reasons. First I believe
in Free Software and helping a free operating system distribution is
something I'll be proud of. The second reason is that I use Debian
every day, and I would like to help this awesome distribution.
Actually I've not done so much for Debian. I've built some packages
libcurl-ocaml, libexpat-ocaml, and freepops. The first has been
accepted by and ftp manager, while the others are still in the NEW
queue. As an author of freepops (http://freepops.org) I've created and
maintained an unofficial deb for many months.
I'm an author of some other stuff, and I've packaged them too, but I
don't think they are ready to enter Debian and I've not proposed my
sponsor to check and upload them. If you are interested this is the
unofficial pool of my deb: http://tassi.web.cs.unibo.it
I've no precise goal, I think I'll help the people of debian-ocaml-maint
mailing list in maintaining the ocaml language branch.
Daigo Moriwaki <daigo>
I learned Java several years ago and was excited by programming with
Free Software and their communities --- I am much interested in Ruby
now. I used to use RedHat, but I found that Debian is most useful
platform for such programming because its policy and vast well-defined
packages. However, there are applications and libraries which are not
debianized so I'd like to make Debian more useful for users and myself
and have built some packages.
Now I need to maintain them and make more packages. But packaging with
help of sponsors is getting a burden for us. It is good chance to become
official developer and be able to maintain packages more quickly and
skillfully.
Oleksandr Moskalenko <malex>
I plan to primarily package Scribus and related documents, materials
and
software plus a number of packages I plan to pick up from the pool of
those
that have been orphaned and are not actively sought by other
maintainers. In
addition, I plan to at least contribute to bug fixing and translation
of documentation and UI into Ukrainian.
Troy Heber <troyh>
I'm just a regular guy enjoying life. I have a wife and two young kids.
I got into computers at a very young age. I started BBSing back in the 300
baud days. Eventually, I started a BBS of my own. As a sysop I became part
of the local community of computer geeks. Eventually BBS's turned into the
Internet, and in the early 90's I discovered Linux. I remember hanging out
at a friends house for a few days trying to download all of the slackware
disks off a very slow slip connection, then transferring it to all of
those free AOL floppies. After managing to get Linux installed, I quickly
realized there wasn't much I could do with it, I'm pretty sure this was
even before slackware hit 1.0. So after a little stint with OS/2 and
Windows, I came back to Linux. I became a RHCE in 99, and was very happy
with Red Hat until they abandoned the free software community. This lead
to look for a new distribution and I found Debian.
I have a BS in computer science and I'm employed by Hewlett Packard in
their Linux & Open Source R&D lab. So I'm very lucky that I get to work
on free software at work and home.
I want to volunteer my time to Debian because I love free software and I
want to get more involved.
Juergen Salk <jsa>
I've been working with unixoid systems since 1991. Started with
AIX during my particle physics research work at CERN. Switched
over to HP-UX and Sun-OS in 1994 when I changed to medical
physics in radiation oncology. In 1997 I've installed Linux on
my personal computer to have a similar working environment at
home for a research project. In all honesty, I didn't expect too
much from it at this time, but finally found myself deeply
impressed by the quality and quantity of software that I came
across. In the aftermath of that, more and more of my
applications migrated to Linux, both at home and at work.
And the more I got engaged in the ideas of free software, the
more I felt obliged to give something back to the community.
I use Debian GNU/Linux almost exclusively, as I appreciate its
general "openness", i.e. its high degree of transparency in how
it evolves. However, I am somewhat frustrated by its weak degree
of awareness and spreading in the medical physics world. In 2003
I was able to convince the leader of the DGMP [1] working group
'Computers in Radiooncology' to have the annual meeting devoted
to the benefits of free software in healthcare. As I took
a modest part in the organization of this meeting, I also invited
the maintainer of Debian-Med to give a talk about his project.
Shortly after that, a discussion came up on the debian-med
mailinglist about making an official package of the DCMTK DICOM
toolkit[2,3]. I soon became involved and finally took a
substantial part in packaging DCMTK for Debian.
My plans are to keep on working on the DCMTK packages. I'd
like to support Debian as a working environment in general
by helping to improve the quality of the current packages
and by identifying useful software projects especially for
medical physicists.
[1] http://www.dgmp.de
[2] http://dicom.offis.de/dcmtk
[3] http://packages.debian.org/testing/source/dcmtk
Michael Ablassmeier <abi>
I'm a 20 Year old system administrator in one of germany's biggest
insurance companies. During my education, i got more and more interested
in Linux and the free Software (and OpenSource) movement in general. I
began using SuSE Linux around 2000. After several months, i did my first
Debian installation.
Noadays, i use Debian in my Home environment aswell as at work and after
so much years, i felt like giving something back would be great, so i
began maintaining my first Debian Package in April 2003.
At the moment my primary interest in Debian is, to keep my packages in
good shape. I enjoy meetings with the Munich Debian crowd from time to
time and have been a helper at the Systems Booth 2004.
Recai Oktas <roktas>
I am a research assistant at Electrics-Electronics Engineering
Department of Ondokuz Mayis University of Turkey, specializing in
"Design Methodologies for Analog Integrated Circuits". I've been
studying on my Ph.D. thesis for a time.
Debian has been my favourite distribution for almost two years. Before
that (since 1995), I used to use Slackware and some RedHat based
distributions. There are a number of issues which motivated me for the
transition. Naming a few, consistency (resulting from `Debian Policy'),
freedom awareness of DFSG and totally open and transparent development
model. (Well, As the answer of "Why Debian?", I would also like to
mention the short but impressive text of Adam Heath [1], which I whole
heartly agree.)
As an active member of `debian-user-turkish' and `debian-l10n-turkish'
lists, my main concern is to provide an almost flawless working
environment for Turkish users of Debian. As part of my already stated
plans to reach this goal [2], I'm currently working on a Turkish
localization script suite which I intend to package as `user-tr'. There
exist some published articles [3a-b] and a mini-HOWTO [4] which could be
considered as the pre-efforts for this project. Being a member of
debian-l10n-turkish team, I also participate in the translation
activities of Debian documentation and web pages (including the highly
critical job of achieving an accurate translation of `Debian Social
Contract' [5] which we've hopefully succeeded after a few discussion in
the mail list.)
[...]
[1] http://www.linuxsolutions.com.br/debian-br/porque_debian/why-debian_me.txt
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-turkish/2003/debian-user-turkish/msg00042.html
[3a] http://www.fazlamesai.net/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=1007
(Woody review in Turkish)
[3b] http://www.fazlamesai.net/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=1079
(Debian Turkish support)
[4] http://www.fazlamesai.net/modules.php?name=3DNews&file=3Darticle&sid=1693
(Debian Turkish mini-HOWTO)
[5] http://www.debian.org/social_contract.tr.html
Tatsuya Kinoshita <tats>
I'm 31 years old and living in Osaka, Japan.
[...]
In 1999, I met a free Emacsen mailer "Mew". Mew was implemented
by Emacs Lisp (mew/*.el) and Perl utilities (IM: im* commands and
backend Perl modules). For bug fixes and improvements of Mew, I
learned Emacs Lisp.
Mew developing team quited maintaining IM, and then I took over a
maintainer of IM officially. I released IM version 142 and later
versions. (Mew version 2 and later versions are independent of IM.)
I used operating systems, Microsoft Windows + BOW (BSD on Windows),
Slackware, and Plamo Linux, and then I met a free operating system
"Debian GNU/Linux". Debian is now my preferred operating system.
On October, 2002, I took over a maintainer of Debian official
package "mule-ucs". (Then I became one of upstream developers
(CVS committers) of mule-ucs.)
--
adn
Mohammed Adnène Trojette
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