New Maintainers
This is a summary of the AM reppot for Week Ending 28 Sep 2003.
7 applicants became maintainers.
Nicolas Bertolissio <bertol@debian.org>
I'm an air traffic controller (one of the guys at the top of
the tower at the airport). Computer has been at home for a
long time (1983/84). I started with a TI/99, this switched to
an Atari ST. With this one I learned 68k assembler and a bit
of C (but a give up this C). About 5 years ago, my father
bought a Mac, 68k, so I went on 68k assembler. Then he
changed for a g4 and MacOSX so I totally give up with this as
I had not enough time.
I bought my own PC 3 years ago, a 2 x Celeron, when Linux
started to emerge in France, with the aim of installing Linux
on it as I have never worked on window$ computers and
colleagues had lots of trouble with it. I failed with a Slink,
so I put a Mandrake. Then I switched to Potato as I had
dependency troubles with the rpm system. Now I'm on Sarge
(with chrooted sid and woody to compile/test my package). I
Totally stop coding until I discovered Perl (see below) which
is now the only language I am able to do something from.
As you can see, my first aim at installing Linux had nothing
to do with open source and free software, it was just a way
to look at what dual-processing could be.
So I read the docs, and discovered what free software was and
I agreed with this philosophy. When I installed my Potato, I
had no time to do something in return of what I had received
as I had my final exams at school. Then I discovered the
l10n-french list and thought I may have time to translate for
Debian. I started with reviewing already translated documents
and never start translating as I was already spending a lot
of time with reviewing.
At that time Michael Bramer (Grisu) started to flood the list
with packages description to review. And they _really_ need
reviewing. The mail format was not really convenient so I
made a first Perl script to automate sending review to
translators. But this was not enough for me and was only
available for French translation. So I've contacted Michael
to ask him whether I could develop a review process for the
DDTS. He agreed, so I made it, and the DDTS has now a review
process available for all languages. This was for me a way to
give something to Debian for all the good thinks I received
from it. I also developed an administration part for the
DDTS as the growth of translators and reviewers made
necessary to be able to easily modify single things as email
addresses, to orphan translations, and so on.
Once the review part of the server was fine, I started
rewriting my script for reviewers, I improved it and make it
deal with translation and bug tracking messages so it became
a console-base client for the French DDTS team. I advertised
a bit for it on the DDTS coordinators list and received bug
reports/questions from people who were not translating into
French, so I thought it could be a could idea to have it
available as on official Debian package. But for the really
first versions, it has always been available as a
(unofficial) Debian package, so people had just to install it
in the usual way and use it, preventing installation error
from a .tar.gz, and introduction of instability with a
non-i.deb thing in the system of possible newbies.
Making it available as an official Debian package should
encourage people to help l10n project, starting with short
descriptions may be easier than translating the Developers'
Reference from scratch.
Nicolas maintains acheck, acheck-rules, acheck-rules-fr, and
ddtc.
Romain Francoise <rfrancoise@debian.org>
I'm 22 years old, I live in Lyon, France. I'll graduate in July from
INSA de Lyon, an engineering school I've been attending for the past 5
years, the last three being a 100% CS course. After that I'll start
working full time for a network security company here in Lyon, for which
I have been working part-time during the last 18 months, mostly doing
kernel hacking (Linux) and other security-related activities.
My first contact with GNU/Linux was in 1998 during my first year at
INSA, we had a machine free for all students to use and I quickly began
hunting around, out of curiosity, reading docs and learning about the
system. I first installed GNU/Linux on my home computer in mid 1999
with the help of a friend, and spent a lot of time playing with it. It
was the then newly released Debian 2.1 (Slink). In the following
months, I upgraded to the unstable distribution (potato) and broke my
system a fair number of times, but I was hooked by then.
In the following years, I tried almost all GNU/Linux distributions out
there, used FreeBSD for a few months and finally returned to Debian in
late 2001, not for its technical excellency but more for the project's
commitment to Free Software, which (I had learned by then) is the
essential part in the whole GNU and Linux success. My activities in the
Free Software world include sending patches for software I use (see
#189597, #189605 in the BTS for recent examples), writing documentation
(emacs-w3m's for example), writing buggy Elisp programs, and general
hacktivism (I helped create a LUG at INSA in 1998 and was Secretary in
2001-2002). All the systems I use at home run Debian, and more and more
systems at work switch to Debian, including a distributed compilation
farm I helped build.
The work I plan to do within Debian mostly consists of maintaining
packages: I already have one package in the Debian archive (tcc),
sponsored by my friend Cyril Bouthors, who is the previous maintainer.
He basically decided to package tcc at my request, and did a good job
with the package but wasn't really interested in it since he wasn't
using tcc at all. In early 2003 I decided to take over the package and
start the NM process since Cyril didn't have the time to give tcc all
the attention it deserved. I reworked and improved the package, closing
most of the bugs and working closely with the upstream maintainer, and I
want to continue working on tcc while at the same time gradually package
more software for Debian. I'd also like to help the release process by
doing NMUs and participating in BSPs, the goal being to have more
frequent releases (several years of reading -devel have taught me that
everyone would like that--I just want to help).
Finally, I want to volunteer my time for Debian simply because I have
been using the system for years and it's time I give something back to
the Project, it's the way Free Software works. More specifically, as I
have said above, I want to give my time to Debian because I believe in
the values it defends and its commitment to Free Software.
Romain maintains tcc.
Jochen Friedrich <jochen@debian.org>
Jochen has written free software for a while now. He is very
active in the Debian IPv6 sub-project, and has contributed
plenty of patches to many upstream packages including the
kernel.
Jochen is the doing most of the work on the IPv6 project at
the moment, both on the packaging end, and working on the
infrastructure, by doing such work as keeping the archive
back-end updated.
Jochen maintains darkice, libsnmp-session-perl, and sup.
Kalle Kivimaa <killer@debian.org>
I decided to apply for a DD when I last ran into serious problems
trying to install something on my laptop running Sid (aptitude was
depending on something that was not in Sid but was in Woody). I hang
around in an IRC-channel with Lars Wirzenius and when I once again
complained about quality control he basically said "either put up or
shut up" so I decided to put up. I also would like to get JSPWiki
(http://www.jspwiki.org) into Debian as I find it a very good
Java-based WikiWiki-engine (and I'm involved in its development).
I've been using Debian exclusively since 2001 (before that I used
Debian in 1998 and 1999 but decided to change to SuSE because I wasn't
satisfied with the quality of stable/testing/unstable for personal
desktop usage) and I find it a very good choice for server usage. I
would like to help making it even better as a server platform and a
good contender for various more desktop-oriented distributions.
Couldn't I do all that without being a DD? More or less yes. I could
file bug reports (with patches) and try to find sponsors (Lars seems
to agree to sponsor C software) for various orphaned packages. On the
other hand, as a DD I could start to figure out with Lars how to make
testing distribution a viable choice as a desktop platform (security
issue being the biggest problem in my opinion).
I have been more or less exclusively Linux user since 1994 (used
Windows mainly for games and some work-related issues) but I haven't
been too active in the actual free software community. Me and a couple
of others started Patchbot project last spring but it sort of fizzled
out. Currently I'm involved in developing JSPWiki and trying to create
a sort of SourceForge type of environment for creating and running
various (live-action) roleplaying games (Ropemylly, using JSPWiki as
the engine).
Kalle maintains ispell-fi, and libgnu-regexp-java.
Robert Larson <blarson@debian.org>
Professionally, I'm a system administrator for several AIX, Solaris,
and Linux systems, as well as being in charge of the network hardware
for a couple of hundred systems. Besides one of my desktop systems,
the only Debian system at work is currently the firewall for the two
hundred systems. (I hope to get more.) My main responsibility for
the past decade as been System Administration, before that I was a
programmer. (Basic variants, C, PL/1 variants, and some obscure
stuff.) I've had experience with a variety of systems at work.
At home, I've been using Debian for almost two years. Before that I
had a Red-Hat system, but it was not sufficiently reliable or usable
to replace my Sun/Solaris system as my primary system. Between RH 4.1
where I started with it and 7.0 which I tried and rejected, I felt RH
was going in a different direction than I wished to. I had been
loading some applications from the RH 4.2 cds that they dropped on the
later versions, and they were no longer compatible with 7.0. When I
started looking at other distributions, I found Debian had the
applications I wanted including cnews and olvwm. Once I had
experienced updating with Debian, I was very impressed. (It is better
tested and integrated than any commercial unix I've ever used. That's
paying thousands of dollars a year for support.)
At a local Linux conference, SCALE, I wound up running the Debian
booth most of the day, letting people know about Debian, giving out 20
cds, and selling T-shirts.
Since I take advantage of other peoples generosity, I feel obligated
to help make the world a better place in ways that suit my skills and
temperament. Debian is such a project that I feel I can contribute to
in a relatively small way by maintaining a few packages, contributing
temperament does not fit that of being a DPL, and I don't want to
invest the time needed to maintain a major package like GCC or
Xfree86.)
I've been contributing free software for many years, none of which got
me fame. Hinfo (see below) and mod_access_rbl for apache are the
currently useful ones. I also publish my own DNSbl, BlarsBL. (aka
block.blars.org)
Robert maintains hinfo, and suck.
Joseph Nahmias <jello@debian.org>
I was first introduced to Linux at college, while studying for my
Bachelors in Electrical Engineering. Back then, we were using Red Hat
4.2. As I got to know Linux better, I tried different distros including
Slackware, Suse, and some others that don't exist anymore... I finally
tried Debian slink, and shortly after potato was released. The relative
smoothness of the upgrade from slink to potato hooked me, and it's only
gotten better since! So ended my quest for a Linux distribution. :-)
Since then I've been enjoying the fruits of other people's labour and I
decided it's time for me to contribute back to Debian.
When I join Debian, I would like to join the listarchives team.
Recently, I have been working with Josip Rodin and Matt Kraai to close
some of the long outstanding bugs, and I hope to continue doing this. I
also would like, time permitting, to help out the d-i team get the
installer in shape. I just got a machine that I can fool around with,
so I will probably start testing the daily builds of the net install
shortly. Of course, I would like to continue to maintain my current
packages, and package software that I feel will be useful to many Debian
users (as opposed to packaging something just because I use it / think
it's cool).
Joseph maintains vtprint, fceu
Makoto Ohura <ohura@debian.org>
Makoto maintains okumura-clsfiles, apt-show-source,
preview-latex, ptex-jisfonts
Thanks to Pascal Hakim for compiling this listing.
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
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