Report for new developer applicant Martín Ferrari <martin.ferrari@gmail.com>:
1. Identification & Background
------------------------------
Check with keyid 0x575D0A76:
ID check passed, key signed by more of 30 existing developers, including myself
and our DAM Jörg Jaspert.
Output from keycheck.sh 0x575D0A76
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
pub 1024D/575D0A76 2004-10-28
Key fingerprint = D32A 5C3A 81B8 5406 ED96 EF81 6964 36BF 575D 0A76
uid Mart�n Ferrari <martin.ferrari@gmail.com>
sig! 1880283C 2005-07-20 Anibal Monsalve Salazar <anibal@debian.org>
sig! 7E7B8AC9 2006-03-25 Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org>
sig! 4B729625 2006-05-20 Peter Van Eynde <pvaneynd@debian.org>
sig! 29499F61 2006-05-20 Sam Hocevar <sam@zoy.org>
....
sig! 5B48FFAE 2007-07-13 Margarita Manterola <marga@debian.org>
sig! E8C43461 2007-07-13 Ana Beatriz Guerrero L�pez <ana@ekaia.org>
sig!2 94C09C7F 2005-07-19 Peter Palfrader
sig!2 5706A4B4 2006-05-21 Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@hogyros.de>
sig! X 248AEB73 2005-07-20 Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org>
sig! X 00D8CD16 2005-08-01 Alexander Schmehl (university) <schmehl@cs.uni-frankfurt.de>
sig!3 X 5B48FFAE 2004-10-28 Margarita Manterola <marga@debian.org>
sig!3 X 8F068012 2005-07-16 Andrew McMillan (Andrew @ Work) <andrew@catalyst.net.nz>
sig!3 575D0A76 2006-05-08 Mart�n Ferrari <martin.ferrari@gmail.com>
sig!3 575D0A76 2004-10-28 Mart�n Ferrari <martin.ferrari@gmail.com>
sig!3 575D0A76 2005-08-02 Mart�n Ferrari <martin.ferrari@gmail.com>
sub 1024g/502FDC57 2004-10-28
sig! 575D0A76 2006-05-08 Mart�n Ferrari <martin.ferrari@gmail.com>
Let's test if its a version 4 or greater key
Key is ok
Applicant writes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| I was born Martín Hernán Ferrari, in the Buenos Aires province,
| Argentina, 28 years ago. I loved (and heavily used) computers since the
| age of 5, when my parents bought a Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2
| (known as the CoCo 2). I had the luck to use a computer which was
| completely unknown in my country, for which there was almost no software
| available, so in a few years I got bored of the games I had. So I
| started to program in BASIC, investigating everything I could on the
| memory mappings, and then programming in m6809 assembly.
|
| Also, I had to learn English at the same time, because the very few
| books and magazines I could get were in that language. Most of my
| knowledge about English, and computers, was self-taught.
|
| When I convinced my parents to buy a new machine, in 1991, it was a
| 80286 PC AT, as it was called in those times. That same year, my
| birthday present was a Evercom Everex 12 modem, which boosted an
| incredible 1200 baud throughput. From that point on, I could never be
| offline again. I set up a BBS system, and then joined a couple of
| FidoNET-like networks, and later FidoNET itself.
|
| Because of my love to FidoNET, I was late to jump to the internet, I
| really didn't want to lose that. But it finally happened, FidoNET died
| not-so-slowly and I got an dial-up internet account.
| But before that, in 1995, I got my first job, in a small shop in my
| town, maintaining the few computers that were there, and programming
| little helper applications in Clipper. The next year I got my first
| systems administration job, fighting with a small Novell Netware 4.1
| network. At this point I convinced my employer to pay for the dial-up
| internet account, and started playing with Pegasus Mail to deliver mail
| to the old DOS boxes using the Novell network.
|
| During the mid-nineties, I bought a InfoMagic's "Linux developer's
| resource" 6-cd pack, out of curiosity of what a friend of mine said it
| was a system where everything was free and nothing could be commercial.
| He was wrong, but anyway I was growing tired of the piles of crapware
| seen in DOS/Windows 3.1 world. At that time, shareware was experiencing
| a lot of popularity, but the quality was less than ideal, and they were
| usually very annoying. Nevertheless, I didn't try that Linux thing until
| 1997, when I got hired as an UNIX system administrator at an newborn
| university, with zero knowledge about UNIX, but somehow they hired me
| anyway.
|
| As I write this, I searched for that InfoMagic set, and I discovered
| that it included a Debian 1.2 release! I've never noticed that before,
| since when I finally used it to install GNU/Linux, the small booklet
| only talked about Slackware and RedHat.
|
| In the university I was hired, there was no network. Only a Solaris 2.6
| workstation connected to an frame relay link to the internet. And I had
| to build all the network infrastructure using GNU/Linux and Solaris. So,
| I took my InfoMagic set and installed Slackware (I think the installer
| seemed easier than RedHat's, but I don't remember the exact reason).
|
| Later, when I had to do an upgrade I learnt that slackware recommended,
| deletion of the entire system and reinstalling. So I tried RedHat. I
| liked RedHat more, and used it a couple of years.
|
| In 2000 I changed my job for a private company, a dot-com which were in
| the middle of the dot-com bubble. Happily, it survived the Argentina's
| crisis of the end of 2001 and the end of the dot-com craze, so I'm still
| working there. I learnt a lot working there, as I maintain about 40
| servers, and they have to be 24x7 available. As part of that learning,
| first I learnt that Mandrake (now Mandriva) was not up to the task of a
| reliable distribution, so I moved to Debian around 2001. I think it was
| Maximiliano Curia (now in the NM process) that hinted me about it.
|
| Nowadays, I'm also doing some programming duties, and internal
| consultation about security, internet protocols, etc. Also I have
| debian-packaged all the applications developed internally, to ease the
| administration.
|
| In this 5 years of Debian love, I gradually became more interested in
| helping back the community. By filling bugs, occasionally providing a
| patch, helping newbies, and spreading the word. It was kind of hard to
| get past the user-only stage, I think because of the complexity of the
| project, but also because I don't have very much experience in
| programming, and that seemed to me a barrier to help more.
|
| Margarita Manterola was very influential, inciting me to get involved. I
| adopted a couple of packages, which didn't had much activity, and in the
| end of 2005 I decided to apply for NM.
|
| I want to mention also, that attending the two last DebConfs was very
| inspiring, they gave me insight into the project, and the will to commit
| to it.
|
| In the last year, I increased my participation, fixing bugs, adopting
| other 3 packages, attending informal BSPs, etc.
|
| I just like to contribute to the community, I want to see free software
| grow more and more, as a way of making the world a better place, in the
| small scale we can help.
|
| I believe in "information wants to be free", and I feel identified with
| the Free Software movement ideals and with the Debian Social Contract.
| Also I believe Debian is one of the best projects within the community,
| so it's where I should be helping.
|
| My interests within Debian are primarily maintaining packages and fixing
| bugs. But also I want to help in translations and localisation.
|
| My goals are to learn, to make a little contribution, and to do it in
| the best possible way.
|
| As to my contributions to Debian, I'm maintaining a page in the Debian
| wiki, which I think is better than trying to describe it here. You can
| find it in http://wiki.debian.org/MartinFerrari
3. Philosophy and Procedures
-----------------------------
Martín has a good understanding of Debian's philosophy and procedures
and answered all my questions about the social contract,
DFSG, BTS, etc. in a good way. Martín committed to uphold the SC and DFSG
in his Debian work and accepts the DMUP.
4. Tasks and Skills
-------------------
Martín has a good understanding of the technical side of Debian.
He mostly maintains perl modules inside the Debian Perl Group and DDs
sponsoring him only say good things about him.
Martín also answered my other questions regarding T&S without problems
and have provided patches for RC bugs.
5. Recommendation
-----------------
I recommend to accept Martín as a Debian Developer.
Account: tincho
Ana
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