Hi, I'm writing in support of Thorvald's application to become more involved with Debian. I've known Thorvald from interactions on the #debian-voip channel since shortly after the mumble package was proposed for addition to the distro (he is its upstream author, and the original packager of it for Ubuntu), and also through interactions with the upstream author of Speex, which I currently maintain and which is a dependency of mumble. While I cannot vouch for the current quality of the mumble package (I have not audited it myself, have never sponsored it, and don't actually use it), I can say that I find his achievements to date as a software developer to be well on the impressive side of unusual. He has proven the ability to take a middle sized, but challenging, project from conception to implementation, to build and support a user-base for it and to package it for 'mainstream' distribution with several different operating systems. That alone would put him well above most applicants who pose themselves as seasoned developers to the company I work for, but that he has done this with effectively no prior industry experience does say to me that he was either very improbably lucky, or (more likely) a very quick and careful learner. He has proven himself to be an inquisitive and eager student of best practice. Any time there have been eyebrows raised on #d-voip about some element of mumble or its packaging he has always been thorough in getting to the bottom of the concerns and exploring options to satisfy them, and quick to get any necessary fixes included in a new release. When such discussions have taken place, they have invariably been non-confrontational and educational to all involved, even in the face of (on rare occasions) somewhat difficult opposition. Where 'obvious' errors have been made, he has always put in the effort to discover why they are obvious to others and to question and improve understanding of the issue beyond the mere application of corrective dogma, usually to the benefit of everyone who was involved. His contributions to Speex (a major component mumble is built on) have been valuable and well received by its upstream author. My impression of the patches I have seen him submit to speex, and of the mumble codebase in general (to the extent that I have looked at it) is that his code is clean and maintainable and would not be something that I'd run in horror from if I were actually using it or responsible for maintaining it (which you can take as an expression of high praise, I dream of getting code half as clean from professional software houses). I have a hunch that it is still not entirely free from 'n00b' errors yet (but then what is), but I am entirely confident that as they are pointed out, good fixes will be found and such things are unlikely to be repeated thereafter. Thorvald has the rare kind of elite but not elitist nature that I believe could make him not only an outstanding contributor to the body of Free Software and to the Debian project distributing it, but also an excellent role model to others on this path and a true pleasure to work with. I heartily welcome his decision to join our project, and wish upon him the cream of our AMs when he finds the time to also run the gauntlet of our NM process. Time spent with a good and careful mentor would most definitely not be wasted on him is my feeling, but he's probably already more careful than most. In the meantime I advocate extending him the privileges needed to maintain this code more directly for Debian. He's essentially been exercising all of them except uploading already and seems clearly well aligned with our fundamental philosophies. Best, Ron On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 09:42:09PM +0100, Thorvald Natvig wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > This is my declaration of intent to become a Debian Maintainer. > > I have read the Social Contract, Debian Free Software Guidelines and > Debian Machine Usage Policy and agree with all of them. > > Currently, I co-maintain the package mumble. > > My GnuPG key DEBA6F3E is signed by the Debian Developer Steinar H. > Gunderson <sesse@debian.org>. > > I look forward to becoming a Debian Maintainer. Thanks for your attention. > > Sincerely, > Thorvald Natvig > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFJuXOh8Jse7d66bz4RAn98AJ95OjEdWqZHVIeyOE8q/m9Fdqj69QCgkQNj > zfWB1wvIZVdBDSORFcaQOwg= > =CaGd > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >
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