AM report for David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
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Hash: SHA256
1. Identification & Account Data
- --------------------------------
First name: David
Last name: Bremner
Key fingerprint: 815B 6398 2A79 F8E7 C727 86C4 762B 57BB 7842 06AD
Account: bremner
Forward email: david@tethera.net
ID check passed, key signed by 12 existing developers:
Output from keycheck.sh:
Syncing Debian Keyrings with rsync from keyring.debian.org
Receiving and checking key
gpg: requesting key 784206AD from hkp server keys.gnupg.net
gpg: NOTE: signature key 38BBA9B7 expired Sat 04 Sep 2010 13:12:02 CEST
pub 4096R/784206AD 2009-05-30
Key fingerprint = 815B 6398 2A79 F8E7 C727 86C4 762B 57BB 7842 06AD
uid David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sig! F2C423BC 2010-08-18 Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@upsilon.cc>
sig! E0BA04C1 2010-08-11 Ralf Treinen <treinen@debian.org>
sig! 974B3E96 2010-08-06 tony mancill <tmancill@debian.org>
sig! C1A00121 2010-08-07 Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk>
sig! B63480BE 2010-08-08 Kumar Appaiah <a.kumar@alumni.iitm.ac.in>
sig! 49E3ACD3 2010-08-10 Chris Butler <chrisb@crustynet.org.uk>
sig! 290DB9CE 2010-08-10 Varun Hiremath <varun@debian.org>
sig! 63E4E277 2010-08-11 Roberto C. Sanchez <roberto@familiasanchez.net>
sig! 8649AA06 2010-08-15 gregor herrmann <gregor.herrmann@comodo.priv.at>
sig! 947897D8 2010-08-19 Anibal Monsalve Salazar <anibal@debian.org>
sig! E397832F 2010-10-10 Luca Capello <luca@pca.it>
sig!3 0ED6122A 2010-09-21 Serafeim Zanikolas <sez@debian.org>
sig!3 784206AD 2010-07-10 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sig!3 784206AD 2009-08-29 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
uid David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>
sig! F2C423BC 2010-08-18 Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@upsilon.cc>
sig! 0B2713C8 2009-09-26 Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>
sig! E0BA04C1 2010-08-11 Ralf Treinen <treinen@debian.org>
sig! 974B3E96 2010-08-06 tony mancill <tmancill@debian.org>
sig! C1A00121 2010-08-07 Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk>
sig! B63480BE 2010-08-08 Kumar Appaiah <a.kumar@alumni.iitm.ac.in>
sig! 49E3ACD3 2010-08-10 Chris Butler <chrisb@crustynet.org.uk>
sig! 290DB9CE 2010-08-10 Varun Hiremath <varun@debian.org>
sig! 63E4E277 2010-08-11 Roberto C. Sanchez <roberto@familiasanchez.net>
sig! 8649AA06 2010-08-15 gregor herrmann <gregor.herrmann@comodo.priv.at>
sig! 947897D8 2010-08-19 Anibal Monsalve Salazar <anibal@debian.org>
sig! E397832F 2010-10-10 Luca Capello <luca@pca.it>
sig!3 0ED6122A 2010-09-21 Serafeim Zanikolas <sez@debian.org>
sig!3 784206AD 2009-05-30 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sig!3 784206AD 2010-07-10 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sub 1024R/38BBA9B7 2009-09-04 [expired: 2010-09-04]
sig! 784206AD 2009-09-04 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sub 1024R/AB01188B 2009-05-30 [expires: 2011-07-08]
sig! 784206AD 2010-07-08 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sub 1024R/AC916F45 2009-05-30 [revoked: 2010-07-10]
rev! 784206AD 2010-07-10 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sig! 784206AD 2010-07-08 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sub 1024R/7BD0B401 2009-05-30 [expires: 2011-07-08]
sig! 784206AD 2010-07-08 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
sub 1024R/4526F399 2010-07-10 [expires: 2012-07-09]
sig! 784206AD 2010-07-10 David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
22 signatures not checked due to missing keys
Let's test if its a version 4 or greater key
Key is OpenPGP version 4 or greater. Good!
Check for key expire stuff
Valid "e" flag on key 0x762B57BB784206AD, expires Fri 08 Jul 2011 04:37:23 CEST, OK!
Valid "s" flag on key 0x762B57BB784206AD, no expiration
2. Background
- -------------
Applicant writes:
1 About Me
~~~~~~~~~~~
I was born while the Beatles were still recording. I graduated from
university three times between the two Star Wars trilogies. These
days I'm a professor of computer science at the University of New
Brunswick in Fredericton, a small city in eastern Canada. My research
is about geometric algorithms and optimization (the "best solution to
a mathematical model" kind, not the -O3 -funroll-loops kind). I teach
courses on algorithms, programming, and programming languages; lately
C, Java, Haskell and Oz. When I can tear myself away from a keyboard,
I've been known to be an amateur photographer and a scuba diver, but
mostly I just walk my dog and go to the odd live music show by a band
I've never heard of.
2 How I came to GNU/Linux and free software
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think I'm not alone among people involved with free software in
having a weakness for "yak-shaving": spending longer to develop a tool
to solve a problem than it would take to solve the problem
directly. The impulse to share is a way for all of this yak-shaving to
make sense. So the short version of how I came to Debian GNU/Linux
and free software is that I spend too much time enhancing my computing
environment.
My "computing life" started in the mid eighties on Multics. Although
hardly (at the time) free software, it did get me started using Emacs,
which caused me to set a university wide record for "CPU money" used.
I resisted using TeX for a few years, ranting about how this should
all be possible with a WYSIWYG interface (we've all met people like
this). Then I learned how to use it, and from then on my definition
of an operating system has mostly been "something to run Emacs and
TeX". I used VAX/VMS for work for a few years, but cost (at the time,
it didn't seem all that weird) kept that from being a serious
possibility for a personal system. The first free operating system
that I really used was 386BSD and then FreeBSD starting in
1992-1993. I can remember making "offsite backups" of the install
floppies in case the lawsuit went the wrong way. By the time I
switched completely to Debian in 2005, I was maintaining FreeBSD ports
(roughly analogous to Debian source packages) for nauty, hashcash,
Ipe, lam, and Text::BibTeX.
So why the switch? Sometime in the late 90's I became interested in
high performance computation, and although it was possible to run
clusters of FreeBSD machines (I ran a 16 node FreeBSD/Alpha for a
bit), it was definitely less supported by the HPC community. The final
straw was when FreeBSD dropped full support for Alpha. At this point
I needed to choose a Linux distribution, and although I'm sure the
idea will displease some, I chose Debian because it seemed the most
like FreeBSD. In particular, it had (almost) the breadth of packages,
and it paid attention to details of user experience. In particular, it
had manpages for everything. So yes, I became a Debian GNU/Linux user
because it supported niche architectures longer, and because it had
the best man pages. And of course, most of what I needed for for my
work was already packaged.
By now the use of Debian is pretty integrated into my teaching and
research work. For example my first act when investigating a new
programming languages text was to make sure this language Oz I'd never
heard of was in Debian.
Over the years I have been a conscientious reporter of bugs to various
open source projects, and made a one or two small contributions to the
Emacs code base, but most of my non-trivial contributions have been to
pretty specialized mathematical software, either as upstream or
providing new features and bug fixes. Lately I have contributed a few
plugins to ikiwiki and been working away on the notmuch mail client.
A typical sort of Emacs hack I've worked on is linking from org-mode
TODO lists into notmuch mail messages.
3 Contributions I have made to Debian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.1 Packaging
==============
I maintain several packages useful for academic writing and teaching.
At the moment I have Debian-Maintainer upload rights for sketch,
bibutils and highlight. The first two I introduced to the archive,
the third I more or less adopted. I maintain latexdiff under the
umbrella of the Debian Perl team.
I also maintain a few more specialized packages to do with
mathematical computing. I am in the process of packaging polymake,
and have packaged dependencies lrslib and nauty. Unfortunately, just
when I thought I was done, I discovered that included copies of
libraries had ABI/API changing patches to them, so I'm now working on
getting some of those changes upstream.
I co-maintain (well, I'm an uploader) for 7 perl modules with the
Debian perl team, mostly inspired (from my point of view) by Ikiwiki
plugins.
Even though I don't use Evolution (or Gnome) at all, I am using
Syncevolution to synchronize various contacts databases (including
Emacs and and my phone).
3.2 Working with upstream
==========================
For the most part I've been really lucky in the upstream developers
for the software I've chosen to package. Patrick Ohly, upstream for
Syncevolution deserves special mention for caring about distributions
above and beyond the call of duty, but André Simon (highlight), Chris
Putnam (sketch) and Gene Ressler (sketch) have all been great about
responding to user issues and about accepting patches from debian into
upstream.
3.3 Squashing Bugs
===================
I have worked on quickly resolving any RC bugs in my packages
(e.g. 569626, 566940, 544862). I have also tackled other RC bugs where
I was interested in the package (I NMUed maxima during the Lenny
freeze to fix an RC bug. The upload didn't make it into Lenny, but it
seemed to motivate the maintainer :) ), or as part of the Debian Perl
team.
3.4 Helping Users
==================
I've tried to be friendly and helpful to various bug reports, whether
they are genuine bugs (552570) or just confusion (499751; in this case
the confusion is understandable).
4 Primary areas of interest within debian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I enjoy working with the Debian Perl team, and as a Debian Developer
I'd likely continue to do that, probably providing a much needed extra
pair of hands uploading (roughly speaking sponsoring) packages for the
team.
My main focus packaging wise will probably continue to be software
related to mathematical computation (graph theory, number theory,
convex geometry) and optimization (linear and integer
programming). Most of this will be somehow associated with the Debian
Science team. One non-packaging project I'd like to help with is
getting a Package Entropy Tracker (PET) (like Debian Perl uses)
working for the Debian Science team. This might need work on the PET
code to support git; currently it is svn only.
2a. Advocate writes
- --------------------------------------------
From: Yaroslav Halchenko <yoh@debian.org>
http://lists.debian.org/20100215151946.GS18213@onerussian.co
My first contact with David has happened in February 2008, while he
was seeking for a sponsor of bibutils package. I became a "dedicated
sponsor" for that (one of a few) package of David, and can say that
I liked working with him: David was always responsive, taking my
advises seriously, and providing corresponding fixes in a timely
matter. Although bibutils is just a single package, and altogether
our interaction with David was somewhat limited and mostly technical,
from that experience I can state that David has good social skills and
is eager to contribute to Debian.
Altogether, David is maintaining several packages to do with academic
writing
- sketch
- bibutils
- latexdiff
and with mathematical computing
- lrslib
- nauty (non-free)
with several more mathematical packages ITP'd and generic utility
packages (e.g. syncevolution and libsynthesis).
He is also experienced to work in a team (co-maintaining highlight
package, working with the pkg-perl team on several packages, nauty is
under Debian Science Maintainers). David seems to work closely with
upstream (particularly bibutils, sketch, lrslib, and syncevolution) in
getting patches upstream and solving user issues. He is energetic in
working on RC bugs (see e.g. 569626, 566940, 544862) and generally
friendly and efficient. He also reacted and NMUed maxima during the
Lenny freeze, when it looked like it was going to be dropped.
David shared with me his plans to focus on packaging and maintaining
in Debian software for mathematical computing and optimization (linear
programming and related topics). He is using and advocating the use
of free software (well, nauty is an odd case, but bliss is a free
replacement ITPed) in his work as a professor in CS and thus he is
well motivated to keep those tools in good shape in Debian.
Therefore, I am advocating David Bremner for Debian Developer
position.
Other voices:
http://lists.debian.org/20100215164356.GC4153@belanna.comodo.priv.at
http://lists.debian.org/20100217151901.GA6239@ib.mobile.jhr-online.de
3. Philosophy and Procedures
- -----------------------------
David 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. he committed to uphold the SC and DFSG
in his Debian work and accepts the DMUP.
4. Tasks and Skills
- -------------------
David has a good understanding of the technical side of Debian.
He is maintainer or co-maintainer of various packages, which are
all in a good shape.
David also answered my other questions regarding T&S without problems.
5. Recommendation
- -----------------
I recommend to accept David as a Debian Developer.
Working together with him during his NM process and also while
packaging darktable was/is an very nice task, he is responsive, friendly
and eager to work on Debian stuff. I'm sure he'll be a great addition to
Debian.
- --
Bernd Zeimetz Debian GNU/Linux Developer
http://bzed.de http://www.debian.org
GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F
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