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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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