Re: A bit of history
On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 03:44:08PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
> > I am trying to find out exactly when I joined Debian.
> [...]
> > 1) The date of my first upload
>
> Oldest signature block claiming you to be a DD seen from early 1998.
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/19970414141008/www.debian.org/people.html
> lists some early packages. The oldest timestamp in those is:
> http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/modemu/current/changelog
> -- John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> Thu, 2 Jan 1996 00:02:50 -0600
Good thinking. Yes, modemu was indeed one of my early packages and it
makes sense that it may have been the first.
It would be nice if we maintained a list somewhere of the dates people
joined -- and left -- Debian.
> That matches the various biogs and SPI platforms which claim 1996.
That's good. It's been the best guess I could come up with.
> > 2) The date my account was created on master
>
> Oldest timestamp in your master $HOME looks to be 15 Jan 1997, which
> is long before the first use of jgoerzen@d.o that I've found.
Yes, I have rarely used that email address. I have an email archived
from Bruce giving my login info for debian.novare.net -- then the
"hot-site backup for master.debian.org" -- dated May 24, 1997. But
that's about it.
> > 3) The date my key was added to the keyring
>
> Predates keyring changelog start in January 1998. I'm stuck.
Gotcha.
Signatures on keys weren't required back then, so I can't even go look
at dates of signatures.
> > [...] All of this predates most of the modern infrastructure: NM,
> > *.qa.debian.org, etc. To make matters worse, the search tool for
> > lists.d.o is returning internal server error right now, so I can't
> > search some lists for my name over a specific time period.
>
> I'm not sure it would help. I've tried to find out when other
> veterans joined and it seems unusual for a primary source like a
> welcome email to be archived anywhere.
Yes, I have looked for that too. I know I got a message from Bruce when
my account was created. But I don't have it anywhere.
Back then, at least for me, email was a much more transient thing.
You'd send a message and, barring certain mailing list archives, that
would be it -- mainly because it was too expensive to archive that sort
of thing. I was probably still using either a 120MB or 512MB hard disk
at the time.
Thanks, MJ.
-- John
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