New Maintainers
This is a summary of the AM report for Week Ending 22 May 2005.
11 applicants became maintainers.
Thaddeus H. Black <thb>
I am married eight years and have two small sons. Presently I am
pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Virginia Tech which
I mean to complete May 2007. My professional background prior to
starting doctoral work is in the construction business. If my age
interests you, I was born in Arizona in 1967, which makes me
thirty-six at the time of this writing.
Technology fascinates me. It always has. Who can say why? Perhaps
like you, I have been a gear-head since the early days. Most kinds of
technology interest me, but most especially bridges, electronics and
computers.
Debian software packaging as such---by which I mean the packaging for
Debian of non-Debian software created by others---is admittedly not
my chief interest. While there do exist one or two pieces of software
not yet packaged for Debian which I might eventually package if
DFSG-compliant licensing could be negotiated with the upstream authors,
Debian thankfully already enjoys a vast number of software packages;
it is not really my intent to add many to the number. My chief
interest is in documenting the existing system. Documentation is my
chief purpose. The package `debram' serves this purpose.
After the `debram', which indexes thousands of Debian packages by
function, my future intentions include
* a proper free C-language reference manual and tutorial
(now 20 % complete).
* an extension of the C manual and tutorial to cover C++
(now 0 % complete)
* an appendix to the C tutorial introducing relevant
assembly-language concepts, concepts without which C is hard to
understand deeply (now 2 % complete), and
* a proper free manual on the PostScript page-description language
(now 1 % complete).
These will keep me busy in my spare time for some years, nor do I
claim that I will be able to finish them all; but I can finish some.
Paul Brossier <piem>
I was born in 1978 and work now as a research student in computer
music. I decided to try a commercial distribution of GNU/Linux at
home because I was missing the talk command we could use at school.
Then i realised there was more than the talk command. As most of
my interest was in audio software, I was also frequently invoking
the usual './configure && make' dance.
When i was told to go for Debian, I discover its large documentation,
its huge archives, its powerful apt mechanisms. I could enjoy a brand
new world with unleashed freedom. And many of the audio softwares were
already in the pool. Eventually i created a few packages still
missing in Debian, getting help from the Debian community and the
Agnula people.
I fully agree with the Social Contract and wish to help making Debian
an even better platform, for music and more, by taking an active part
in this community.
Marc Dequènes <duck>
I'm a french duck who just graduated as a computer science
engineer. I'm begining to work in software/network developpement at
Nerim (french internet provider).
I began learning GNU/linux in my student residence and participated in
network management. So i'm using GNU/Linux for about 5.5 years, and
Debian for about 2.5 years.
I want to volunteer my time because i think participating is the best
way to express my point of view about freedom and user/human respect,
about the not so important power of money, and it is a manner to thank
people whose work i'm taking advange of.
I'm doing my best to maintainer some packages for (i think)
interresting softwares that were missing in the archive. I've sent
some bug reports and sometimes participated in a patch
elaboration. Recently I started contributing to Debian GNU/Hurd to
help porting softwares.
Apart from Debian activities, i'm developping with a friend a GPLed
network administration tool called LMS.
Eric Evans <eevans>
I am a 30-something father of two, working as a systems engineer /
developer in San Antonio Texas.
I started using Linux in 1997, (Debian in 1999), and quickly grew to
respect the results of the Free software community, its
contributions, and its values. The need to give back has stuck with
me ever since, and my interest in doing so only grows more avid with
time.
It is my desire to maintain, (useful), packages for the project,
triage bugs reports, and assist other maintainers when needed.
Pierre Habouzit <madcoder>
Well, first, let's talk about me. I'm 23 and I'm french. I'm a PhD
student at INRIA [1] in the MOSCOVA Project [2] (since the 1st
september). I'm a former student of the École Polytechnique [3].
I had my first own computer in 2001. I allways wanted to give a try to
linux and then I tried it. Moreover, I had a big problem with windows,
since my hardware was quite young and had really poor drivers, my
maximum uptime under windows 2000 was about 2 hours ... So I decided to
remove windows from my system, and tried debian. I never used anything
else than linux since.
[...]
Another thing, more close to debian itself, is the state of the web apps
in debian. there was a thread on debian-devel 1 month ago (or maybe a
couple of weeks I don't remember, the entry point is here [8]). I've
posted in the thread, and in fact, since I'm packaging a web app
(flyspray) I already noticed the mess it was. I've even writen a draft
for a method to package php pear modules and I'm quite interested
to work with other people on a general policy about web apps packages
in debian, since I'm convinced web apps are really important, in the
near future I expect most of the more used apps to be web-based ones.
[1] http://www.inria.fr/
[2] http://pauillac.inria.fr/moscova/
[3] http://www.polytechnique.edu/
[8] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/08/msg01104.html
Dafydd Harries <daf>
My use of and participation in Debian has gradually increased over the
past four or so years, culminating this year in translating the new
Debian installer to Welsh and becoming the maintainer of a few Debian
packages. I've been using Debian for nearly as long as I've been using
free software, and it has played an important part in the development of
my belief in the importance of software freedoms. Aside from Debian, I'm
also active with the South Wales Linux User Group, and the GNOME
project.
Lorenzo Martignoni <martignlo>
I'm studying computer science at "Universit degli Studi di Milano
Bicocca". I'm a member, and one of the founders of the Milano Linux user
Group and of CERT-IT (Computer Emergency Response Team - ITaly).
I wish to become a Debian GNU/Linux developer because I really like the
project and I want to give my contribute to the community.
Eugeniy Meshcheryakov <eugen>
I am a student of the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, I am
also working in the Information and Computing Centre in the
university. As I am speak Ukrainian I intended to do some
translations to Ukrainian for Debian (I am translating Debian
Installer and I translated several other packages, mostly debconf
templates) and also maintain packages (now only Ukrainian
localisations and dictionaries, maybe other packages in future). I
also made patches for some bugs.
About Linux... My first experience with Unix was in the university.
I used HP-UX during programming course. Then I started to work in ICC
where programmed first for FreeBSD and then for Linux (RedHat). Then
I tried Debian GNU/Hurd and then GNU/Linux. What I like in Debian:
package system, availability of unstable version and BTS that makes
it easy to contribute translation and other patches.
Igor Stroh <jenner>
I came to Linux about five years ago, as I applied for my job as
software developer/network administrator for a local IT-company. During
the first year I was forced to learn Linux. After some time I realized
there is Debian and since then, I never used any other Linux
distribution (or any other OS actually) :) Having profited from Debian
so much, I thought I should contribute some of my spare time to the
community by maintaining several packages and also packaging and
releasing the stuff I wrote myself.
My language of choice is python. Therefore, I spend the most time
writing products for Zope or python scripts for our customers.
Last but not least, about two years ago I helped translating parts of
Debian BTS into german. I gave up after a month because of lack of
time (had to concentrate on my studies).
Fabio Tranchitella <kobold>
My name is Fabio Tranchitella, I'm 20 years old and I'm from Turin,
Italy. I'm actually working as free software consultant in a small
company which I founded with my wife. I'm also studing computer science
at Politechnic of Turin.
I use at work (and at home) mostly Debian GNU/Linux, and this is why I'd
like to contribute with his developing. Debian is the OS which I always
dreamed: a lot of high-quality packages, with security and feature
updates, and a big community which grow day by day.
I believe in free software, and I'm involved in some groups which try to
spread the free software culture, both in Turin and in Hungary (my wife
is hungarian).
I hope to become a DD because I intent to help the growth of the Debian
community, maintaining some packages and (if it's needed) developing new
free software.
I already maintain phpldapadmin, which I packaged from the scratch, but
I'll package other stuff ASAP (I've also an ITP for gtkdialog [1],
but I wasn't able to find a sponsor for this).
Eric Warmenhoven <warmenhoven>
I'm a 23 year old software engineer for a storage company in San
Jose. I got started with Linux seven years ago when a classmate gave
me a Red Hat CD. Two years later, someone clued me into how much
better apt-get was, and I've been using Debian since.
In early 2000 I started working on gaim, and spent nearly two years
working on that. I added OSCAR support (the official AOL protocol,
which is now also used by ICQ), multi-protocol support, plugins, ....
For Debian, besides just creating and maintaining packages, I'd like
to get involved in the new maintainer process, possibly becoming an AM
myself.
--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/
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