AM report for Laszlo Kajan
I recommend to accept Laszlo Kajan as a Debian Developer.
1. Identification & Account Data
--------------------------------
First name: Laszlo
Middle name: -
Last name: Kajan
Key fingerprint: 91B46ECD90312D7C86F9469A9BD2D6409A0C52FA
Account: lkajan
2. Background
-------------
I have graduated as a plant biologist in 2001. My thesis was about a web
service I developed on my small Linux box. I do not even remember, it probably
had Red Hat on it, but I do remember long nights of compiling kernel. I did my
PhD in Italy, coding my work on a Red Hat system, using mainly Perl. In 2005 I
started to work at a private bioinformatics company in Poland. I had a small
cluster to administer and a project to program. At one point, in my
frustration with the OS we used to have there, I decided to give Debian stable
a chance, and changed the cluster to it. I recommend (and install) Debian
stable for similar clusters ever since: the way the distribution is built and
organized, the way releases are done have proven to be the right thing for the
computing environments I worked in. After Poland I worked for a year and a
half at Columbia University in New York, in 2008 and 9. I was not responsible
for the administration of the Linux cluster (which was Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, if I remember well), and worked with JavaScript mainly. This was a
known bioinformatics group with a complex, popular web service that relied on
many pieces of software - developed in the group - to deliver results for web
queries. The important bit comes now: When the group moved to Germany in 2009,
I with a colleague (Guy Yachdav), have decided to 1: use Debian stable as the
OS at the new location, and 2: perform the relocation of the entire software
infrastructure of the group using Debian packages we would create. We set up
our own Debian repository and packaged all of the software of our group. We
then tried to publish this, and were rejected. Soon afterwards, Steffen
Moeller contacted our group leader, about one of the packaged tools. His
question, if I remember well, was: 'Do you plan to contribute these packages
to Debian?'. Having worked with Debian, and having created many Debian
packages already, this - contributing our packages to /the/ distribution -
seemed like the logical step to make. Also, by this time, the status of being
involved with Debian has become associated with a sign of high skill for me,
and I started to play with the idea to get there myself. So Steffen became my
mentor, and I got my alioth account in 2011, joining the Debian Med Project. I
started to transfer packages (the Debianization) from our own repository to
alioth, and learn to do it better, now under the review of Steffen, later
Andreas Tille who is very active in the Med Team, and the FTP masters. Steffen
introduced me to the finer details of packaging gently, and I owe him a big
thanks for this. Being a bioinformatician, with almost no formal education in
informatics, there was a risk for me early on to bail out because of the
unexpected multitude of packaging details I had to address for Debian. This
was a problem, because taking the effort to provide packages for major Linux
distributions is not the standard in bioinformatics. I had to justify the
extra effort, or at least, convince myself that it is not too much. Of course
it /was/ too much, but by the time I realized this, I got involved too much,
and even went to the Debian Med Sprint in Southport in 2012 [1]. I applied to
become a Debian Maintainer somewhat late, and was accepted in March 2012. I
then taught a course at the University, where I asked my students to prepare
Debian packages for the remaining free software from our lab. These components
can now be found as the dependency tree of the 'predictprotein' package. The
experience of this course highlighted the advantages of being a Debian
Developer. I therefore have asked Steffen and Andreas if they think I am
ready, and if they could advocate my application. They answered positively,
and so here we are. I am applying to become a Debian developer now.
The reason why I use free software for my work is that I want to be able to
control it. In as much detail as I am able to. This works well for
me, I am able to get my working environment do what I want it to do; I rarely
have to make compromises. I believe this would not be the case with a closed
source working environment.
Volunteering my time for Debian is not really volunteering. As I wrote
above, we run our lab on Debian, and have our lab software as Debian
packages. At this point, when I just do my daily work, I automatically
contribute to Debian. I often do volunteer my spare time as well, but that is
on winter days, when paragliding is not possible.
I would say my primary area of interest in Debian is to prove that it is the
best operating system for my working environment. Since I
recommended Debian, I am interested in keeping it in a shape that proves me
right. In particular I focus on software related to bioinformatics, the tools
I need in the lab. My contributions as along these lines [2]. True, many of
the packages under my name are from our lab. That is because I got to package
this software first. But when I come across something that I find useful and I
am the first to it, I package that too (concavity, conservation-code,
librcsb-core-wrapper, hhsuite, etc.).
The goal to accomplish is to become a Debian developer, a proof of dexterity
for me. I believe in this, please do not take it away from me! :)
Debian, the OS is just a tool for my work. My direct goal is to achieve
something at work, and I need my tools in a good shape. This translates to the
goal of keeping Debian the most useful it can be.
[1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/Meeting/Southport2012
[2] http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=lkajan%40rostlab.org
--
Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com
C++ GNU/Linux userspace developer, Debian Developer
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