Public report for Volker Janzen <douglas@voja.org>:
1. Identification
-----------------
ID check passed - one DD signature (joergland).
Key 51CF8417, available from subkeys.pgp.net (output trimmed).
pub 1024D/33254331 2002-02-22 Volker Janzen <mail@koboldmaki.net>
Key fingerprint = 773B 0A45 A451 FB2F CD1B 5A57 231C 778D 3325 4331
uid Volker Janzen <douglas@voja.org>
sig!3 51CF8417 2003-10-15 Joerg Wendland <joergland@debian.org>
uid Volker Janzen (voja) <webmaster@rotflbtc.de>
sig!3 51CF8417 2003-10-15 Joerg Wendland <joergland@debian.org>
sub 1024g/902F7357 2002-02-22
sig! 33254331 2002-02-22 Volker Janzen <mail@koboldmaki.net>
2. Personal
-----------
Volker writes about himself [length warning]:
I'm 26 years old. I study computer science at the university of Ulm,
Germany. I have a small computer buisiness, too. I offer webhosting
services. I spend my leisure time with my girl friend or with my
computers.
My first steps with computers were in the year 1990 on my father's Atari
520 ST. Years later I owned my first computer, an Atari 1040 STFM. I
bought some software for the computer, other software I used was
freeware. When I started programming on this platform. The programs were
primarily for myself, but I published them as freeware in a mailbox
network. I got some good feedback and it was a lot of fun. I haven't
heart the words "Open Source" in this time.
End of 1997, while my civilian service, I changed the hardware platform.
I got my first PC, a Pentium 90. I used a operating system from the guys
of redmond. I need to say that I'm still using it, because I have some
older applications running on it and my family is more familiar with
this OS.
1998 was the year when I started my computer science studies. There were
two computer pools: Windows NT and something called "Sun". Later I found
out, that these computers were Sun Ultra/1 and Ultra/5 boxes running
Solaris, a unix system. It was also the year where I had my first
contact to Linux. I tried to install SuSE Linux in version 5.x. I can
remember that I could just use a console, I wasn't able to set up X. I
still didn't know what free software and Open Source really was. In this
year I also started a small computer buisiness, starting with software
development for Windows.
Continuing my computer science studies, some Linux Boxes were installed,
and a year or two later nearly all Ultras were gone. The Sun-Pool got a
Linux-Pool. Annoyed by the full and instable Windows computer pools, I
tried to learn how to use Linux. I learned in a course what free
software is and what GPL means. This didn't influence me in these days.
I wrote freeware and some comercial programs.
My first use of Linux and Open Source programs was in the webhosting
sector. I became admin on a webserver and learned how to install and
update all services you need on a Linux server. I really liked all the
free software, like Apache, Sendmail and Bind. At this point I realized
at Linux is the best server operating system I could imagine. Its
software is free software. You can use it in privat or commercial
environments, you get the source to compile the version you want, you
can read the code and you can fix the code.
I was a bit depressed that I had some difficulties with my home
computers as Linux workstations. The Linux boxes at the university were
running good, but I didn't manage it to set up a Linux box at home that
fit my need, to get rid of Windows. This opinion changed by the time.
Today I have a good Linux box, based on Debian GNU/Linux and I think
that this box will be my new working environment. But stop, there is a
part missing in the story.
Before I knew Debian GNU/Linux, I became a member of the OpenSource
community. On my Atari I used a tool called UDO. I used it for my
program documentations. I needed to write one UDO document and UDO
generated ASCII, HTML, RTF and other documents I needed to distribute my
software. This software got OpenSource in october 2001. First I just
managed the mailing lists and the projects website. It took me over a
year to get into the code and the small UDO community needed one and a
half year to get new binary archives with some bugfixes and little new
features. Today I enjoy being an active part in the UDO community. I
found out many internal things of UDO and I can say that I now
understand much of the code. I work on bugfixes and new features.
Now there is still missing how I came to Debian GNU/Linux. At my
university SuSE Linux is used in the computer science Linux pool and I
used this at home, too. One day, I wanted to do an SuSE online update,
which failed. I told this to a friend and he said, that I should install
Debian GNU/Linux. I heard about this distribution of another friend
before, but I thought it was to difficult for me. What a
misapprehension. When I need to set up a new webserver my friend helped
to install Debian GNU/Linux on it. I really liked the easy updates and
software installation. Later I tried Debian GNU/Linux at home, too, and
I really like it. I learned much about Linux and it's software and today
I couldn't live without Linux. I need to say that I still use Windows,
but at this point I use most of the time Linux.
Inside the UDO community we decided that we should build binary packages
for Linux, too. I started to ask a Debian developer I know from the
university, how to build Debian packages. He gave me some online
ressources and I started reading about package creation and how to
become a Debian maintainer. So I want to package UDO and get a Debian
developer. By the way: the first RPM package was created using alien
under Debian. It took some more months to get a really working spec file
for RPM creation.
So, this is the story how I got familiar to free software and Debian
GNU/Linux. I like the idea to get a Debian developer, because I can give
something back to the Debian community, which really created a good
system. I think that UDO is a good package to start. It is not too
difficult to build and I'm one of the upstream authors. I know the
software and I got a Debian package, that was sponsored to get uploaded
in the distribution. When I have the routine in updating the UDO
package, I want to adopt another Debian package or package new software.
Of course I will assure, that this software will be under a free
software license (otherwise it's for the non-free distribution part).
When I can create a patch, I will make it available to upstream authors.
For UDO this will be no problem, because I'm one of the upstream
authors. For an adopted package I will try to keep the contact to
upstream authors. When there are any problems with UDO or an adopted
package, I'll do my best to solve the problem by providing a bugfix -or
if I can't find it- inform the upstream author of the bug.
Searching around on Volker shows a few personal homepages (excellent
Google-fu, dude), and mainly UDO-related stuff. He seems to have done a good
job with UDO in terms of integrating with the community.
3. Philosophy and Procedures
-----------------------------
Volker had quite a good understanding of P&P; P&P check passed.
4. Tasks and Skills
-------------------
Volker passed T&S easily. His answers to the questions were very well done,
and he has one package in the archive - udo. When checking this package, I
only had small nitpicks (e.g. build-{indep,arch}) in addition to the
copyright stuff; overall, it was very well done. T&S check passed.
5. Summary
-----------------
I recommend Volker's acceptance as a Debian Developer.
Account: voja
Forward-Email: douglas@voja.org
:) d
--
Daniel Stone <daniels@debian.org>
Debian: the universal operating system http://www.debian.org
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