AM report on Ari Makela
Background
----------
Ari writes about himself:
-- 11 years of unix experience
-- has worked the last 5 years as a unix and Linux system administrator,
mostly with WWW and Samba servers. Now administers 10 Debian boxes,
some of which are 'stable', others are 'testing'.
-- has written a lot of Perl. Also has written some sh, C, and a little Java.
-- Linux experience since (about) 1993 (or kernel version 0.9) starting
with SSL and Slackware,
-- Debian user since 1996 with Debian 1.2.
Identity
--------
GPG key signed by Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <ajk@gaia.iki.fi
pub 1024D/182FFF06 2001-03-27 Ari Makela <hauva@iki.fi>
sig 182FFF06 2001-03-27 Ari Makela <hauva@iki.fi>
sig 534584E8 2001-09-02 Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <ajk@gaia.iki.fi>
sub 1024g/F77E5BAD 2001-03-27
sig 182FFF06 2001-03-27 Ari Makela <hauva@iki.fi>
Philosophy and Procedures
-------------------------
Ari is familiar with the DMUP and agrees with it.
I also asked Ari to pick three very different non-DFSG packages and say what
needed to be done to make them DFSG-free. His answers were as follows:
> xv:
> Commercial redistribution is not permitted
>
> xv is shareware which is not, of course, DFSG compatible.
>
> The code uses LZW compression algorithm is patented by
> UNISYS. The problem is going away this year because the patent
> expires. Also the problem does not exist in all countries, for
> example in Finland the patent itself would be worthless.
>
> There are limitations how xv must be configured.
>
> Mofications cannot be distrubuted, even as patches, without
> the consent of the author.
>
> I noticed xv is no longer packaged in testing and that on a debian
> mailing list it was said that xv should be added to a page that lists
> software that Debian cannot package. I deleted the mail and now I
> cannot find the page neither by clicking around nor using the search
> engine. Do you know the URL of the page?
>
> calctool:
>
> Rather sad that the only(?) good GUI calculator for unix is not
> free: the licence seems to be very short:
>
> * Permission is given to distribute these sources, as long as the
> * copyright messages are not removed, and no monies are exchanged.
>
> There's no right to modify, only to distribute and also the fact that
> no money at all can be exchanged, even for media costs.
>
> acroread:
>
> - No source is available
> - No modifications with the exception of the installer are
> allowed and even they are restricted
> - Use of plugins is restricted
I also asked Ari an ethics question:
> Suppose you are moderator of a small, private, email group, which is
> interested in some topic (let's call it "Topic A"). Then suppose you are
> also a subscriber to another email list which is denoted "private", even
> though you know that it is private to a large number of people. Suppose
> some item on "Topic A" comes up on that second mailing list. Under what
> circumstances is it ethical for you to copy a message from the second
> list to the firt list?
His response shows a good understanding of mailing list etiquette:
> Only with permission of the author and the authors who were quoted in
> the original message. Even then it would depend on the matter.
Tasks & Skills
--------------
Ari wrote and packaged a small Perl program called "dbmanage" which
does for Berkeley DB files what dbmmanage (in apache) did for DBM files.
He was quick to make fixes as required, and the package looks to me
as if it is in very good shape.
Recommendation
--------------
I recommend that Ari Makela be accepted as a Debian maintainer.
Debian login: hauva
Forwarding email: hauva@arska.org
Susan Kleinmann
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