I recommend to accept Thomas Preud'homme as a Debian Developer.
1. Identification & Account Data
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First name: Thomas
Middle name: -
Last name: Preud'homme
Key fingerprint: 5F35F67BAFA8B6D581CA08EBD003852FBD52529E
Account: robotux
2. Background
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I am a PhD student in computer science at the LIP6 lab in Paris, France. I
discovered Linux when I was an undergraduate student but at first it was just a
working environment like anything else. Then I came to read some article about
the policy of Microsoft with regards to standard ("Embrace and extends") and
came to realize progressively the value of free software. It gives back power
to the user so that a software editor cannot block your usage of the software
or force the evolution of the software. You are free to adapt it, or find
someone to adapt it for you if you are not a programmer.
I then installed Debian GNU/Linux as my first Linux distribution because it is
what a friend advised me and I never wanted to change since then. I got
especially appealed by the social contract and the DFSG. I got so much from
free software, a whole working and powerful operating system, that I wanted to
contribute back.
Another reason is that I feel concerned about freedom and I thus think it is
a necessity to use free software everywhere. It should be used in all the
infrastructures I use of course, so that my freedom is protected. I think even
people who claim to not care about free software should actually care because
our lives rely more and more on computers of any kind. Of course, whether to
use free software or not remains a personal decision. There is two things I
can do to increase the use of free software:
* convince people about its importance;
* make free softwares more attractive.
My contribution to Debian is a way to make free software more attractive. The
packaging itself makes the usage of free software easier and adds more free
(as in free speech) code, fixing bugs makes the software more usable, porting
applications increases the number of users being able to use the software and
so on…
The contribution I made in Debian were mostly on packaging. The package I
maintain can be seen on the DDPO page about me. I also co-maintain dspam with
Julien Valroff. I also fixed a few RC bugs and armhf build failure. Of course
bug reports were also submitted. Recently I took over upstream development of
pstack in order to make it support multiple architectures (i386 and amd64 only
for now, armel on the way) and I am also working on adding support for armhf
in tcc.
What I am interested in Debian is:
* to continue packaging my software and package a few more
* fix RC bugs more easily
* help fix build failure on !x86 archs. I am very eager to learn more about our
various architectures, their specificities. In particular, I would like to take
a more active role when arm64 bootstrap will happen
* participate in discussion around debian-policy
* mentor and sponsor some new contributor
I intend to wait some time after becoming DD before working on the last 2
points in order to gather enough experience.
I don't really have goal about Debian. As long as Debian continue to stick to
its social contract and DFSG I will continue to support it and try to
contribute as much as I can. I hope to collaborate with many people and to
help Debian.
Regards,
Ansgar
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