This is a summary of the AM report for Week Ending 23 Jan 2005. 12 applicants became maintainers.
Gaudenz Steinlin <gaudenz> "As you probably already know, my name is Gaudenz Steinlin and I live in Bern, Switzerland. I'm 28 year old. I'm currently studying Sociology and Mathematics at the University of Bern. I will finish my studies with a masters degree in about a year. I came to Unix and Linux in summer 1995 when I was attending a Computer Science Camp for high school/college students at the Computing Center of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. There we were using some flavour of UNIX and another student told me about Linux which he said was licensed under Copyleft so anyone can download it for free. I then downloaded some Slackware disk sets with my modem at home and started playing with Linux. Later I tried SuSE because it was the only distribution available on CD in most Swiss book stores. About three years ago I started using Debian because I got annoyed by all those wizards SuSE implemented in YaST. They changed things I strange ways. Debian is my primary choice as Linux Distribution since then. Most of my Linux skills I learned while working for the Computer Services Department of the University of Bern. I implemented the first Linux solutions there. Among other things I set up a cluster for "High Performance Computing" and gave introductory courses to Linux for system administrators. Currently I'm teaching basic Linux System Administration for the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property. They want to do a LPI L1 certification for some of their Windows System Administrators. Since about half a year I'm working on the debian-installer project. I was looking for a free software project to get involved with and this project was listed on debians /devel/todo website. I also attended the Oldenburg d-i debcamp. After becoming a Debian Developer I intend to continue to work on debian-installer. If someday d-i will be perfect and nothing more needs to be done (I don't expect this to happen in the next few months :-) ) I will look for another part of Debian that needs help. I'm also interested in making Debian more friendly to computer newbies while still having a good distribution for experts. I will probably also maintain some packages (see below) but this is not my main interest and I'm more interested in team efforts where I can learn from others and work with them (and hopefully someone can also learn from my experience) than in doing packaging work all on my own. I'm really convinced of the idea of free software and I think that this software development model is superior to proprietary software for practical and philosophical reasons. This is the main reason why I want to contribute to Debian. After using free software for several years and also earning some money with it I think it's time to give something back. Free Software is also a great way to learn more and I hope that my skills will constantly improve while working for Debian." Pascal Giard <pascal> "I've been using GNU/Linux for about 6 or 7 years now. i'm a student in electric engineering, mostly interested in asynchronous electronics (asynch cpu design using VHDL, implemented in FPGAs). I'm also interested in building free (still as in freedom) hardware (see http://www.opencores.org/faq.cgi/section/2/2.1#2.1) I've being trying to use GHDL and IVI for my VHDL compilation and simulation needs, but failed so far (briefly, it's because the support for ieee.std_logic.{arith,signed,unsigned} isn't fully working yet) Piracy, a domain from which i've retired 5 years ago, brought my attention on GNU/Linux and free software in general. The more i got to know free software and GNU/Linux (the moral motivations, cooperation habits, ethics) the more i was losing interest in piracy. About ethics, i consider myself as a part of the free software movement, not open source (as explained at www.gnu.org). I want to contribute time to Debian because its structure as proven it's efficiency and mostly because Debian is the closest to my philosophy (even tho there's a president (i know he's not irrevocable, but still...)). It's also because i feel it's very important to share knowledge (knowledge shouldn't be selled even less applications/softwares), volonteer time to build a free platform and eventually a free computer." A Google search turns up his homepage at http://organact.mine.nu/ . Bruno Barrera <bruno> "I am a nineteen years old student currently studying engineering at the Universidad del Mar of Chile. I first started using Linux in July 2001, and then Debian in January 2002. I am currently working at Computacion Integral S.A [1] as a system administrator. I am also an editor of the "Linux Users from Chile"[2] portal, where I usually post news related to Debian, and give some support to new users. I first started working on Debian by translating man-pages to Spanish for programs such as dselect, dpkg-deb and dpkg-name, and I then moved on to become a package maintainer. I currently maintain aget, giFToxic and xmms-defx which are all in the archive. I intend to continue doing translation work in Debian as I feel it is an important part of the project. I also want to continue maintaining packages, and fixing bugs, as well as looking for good projects which I could package for Debian. Finally, I intend to continue helping people on mailing lists such as debian-mentors where a lot of people are asking for sponsors, or at least for someone to take a look a their packages, as it is an important job." [1]: http://www.debian.org/users/#ComputacionIntegral [2]: http://www.linuxchile.cl Max Vozeler <xam> "I'm 21, living in Berlin (Germany) and currently finishing the compulsory civilian service that we have over here working in an IT youth education center. I have worked as a system administrator mostly for Linux systems before that. There was one key event that got me curious about Linux and the Free Software community. Some weeks after I had gotten access to the internet for the first time in 1995, I found someone on IRC who knew Linux well and was happy to answer my questions. This nice guy from the UK spent literally days walking me through my first Linux installation, patiently explaining each step and much more in between. We didnt get the system to boot, but the enthusiasm that he had put into explaining things to me had made a strong impression. I tried again some time later with a Slackware and then a SuSE with a good printed manual. After a few days the system was working and I was hooked up, joined the local LUG and continued to use Linux. The switch to Debian Bo came after SuSE recklessly destroyed my newly discovered configuration tweakings." Luk Claes <luk> "I was born on the 12th of February 1980. I just graduated as Master in Computer Science. I live in Belgium (Ghent). I have tried many (GNU-) Linux distributions: Mandrake, Redhat, Corel, Suse, Debian and maybe others I can't remember ;-) The main reasons why I chose Debian were the security and apt. I keep using Debian because I like the freeness (in beer as well as in speech), the security (in general as well as the quick updates), the high packaging standards (policy and best practices), the release system (experimental - unstable - testing - stable), the BTS, the PTS and apt of course ;-) I want to give back to the community by being a package maintainer, by reporting and solving bugs in general. As a DD I would like to squash bugs (NMU simple and maybe harder RC-bugs ...), help qa and nm, and maybe help with autobuilding (I have no 'exotic' hardware yet though ;-) )." Lucas Wall <lwall> "My name is Lucas Wall. I'm 27 years old and I'm currently studying computer engineering. I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My regular job is as a developer, but I also worked (and still put out fires) as a Linux sysadmin. On my free time I develop free software. My first contact with Linux was 10 years ago, with Slackware, and I immediately fell in love with the concept of "free software". A couple of years ago I had to relinquish some of my sysadmin tasks to spend more time developing, so I decided to look for a distro with a good package distribution system. I had tested Debian in the past (Potato) and I decided to give it a try once again. Now Debian is my distro of choice and the one I recommend. I'm currently maintaining the popfile package and would like to help in the continual effort to translate Debian to Spanish. I think that what makes Debian great is the effort lots of people do to make an excellent job and I would like to put my grain of sand." Lionel Elie Mamane <lmamane> "I became involved with the local free software crowd there (mostly introduced by Joost van Baal). In November 2001, due to the lacking of any LUG, UUG, BUG or similar group open to anyone (the local university has a computers enthusiast club (which for all practical purposes is an Unix users group, in the strictest interpretation of "Unix": BSD's, Solaris, Ultrix, ..., but no "written-from-scratch" clone like GNU/Linux or the GNU), but it is open only to students (maybe staff, too)), Joost van Baal created Enosig, the "Eindhoven Open Source Interest Group" to serve that purpose. One year later, noticing that it wasn't going anywhere, I had a chat with Joost. We agreed that starting immediately, Enosig would stand for "Eindhoven Free Software Users Group", and I started advertising it a bit. My hope was to attract newbies in need of help, which we did not achieve, but it got us a few more people subscribed to the mailing list, and an interesting Debian GNU/Hurd install party... We recently did a "coup", when Bruce Perens was in Eindhoven, and we organised dinner with him + talk by him." Florent Rougon <frn> "Hello! My name is Florent Rougon, I'm 24 years old and I live in France, at about 10 km south of Paris. I've been a Debian user since 1999-2000. That experience, following my first contacts with TeX&friends and Emacs on MS-Windows in 1999, gradually made me appreciate the whole value of free software---that is, not only its technical merits. As I started to feel at ease as a Debian user, I became interested in understanding how the fine packaging system worked and applied the newly acquired skills to small pieces of software I had written in the meantime (PyXMMS, PyXMMS-remote). That is basically how I got on the track of doing something about, instead of only following, Debian development. I intend to contribute what is needed in my eyes for Debian to provide a decent service to its users in the areas I care most about (i.e. currently, mainly Python, Emacs and TeX)---and that is precisely how I got to package lmodern." László Böszörményi <gcs> "I am Laszlo Boszormenyi, from Hungary. You can use the nick GCS, or call me Laszlo. I am working for a chemical factory as a software engineer in the process industry field, and also a Linux related company as a developer. Meanwhile I am doing my second degree at University of Miskolc. As when I was young, I was a demo coder on C64 (thus few of you may already know me, like David Weinehall do), I somewhat experienced with assembly too, but I was not followed assembly on other platforms. My plans for Debian is to help out with packages, mainly with server side ones, as I am already a member of Mailman, XML related packages and Grub packaging groups, but I really contributed only to Mailman yet. But I am experienced with kernel, Subversion, Apache and Gnome packages as well, and C/C++/Java/Perl in general. Also with time I would like to help new maintainers to work on existing packages in Debian instead of providing new ones. I really would like to see timely releases." Mattia Dongili <malattia> "I'm a quite experienced developer (IMO :)), and I'd like to help debian development mainly. I've already packaged my own software and I'm going to package a 3rd party sw at the moment. I'd like to go on packaging and I will adopt some orphaned package soon. If my spare time will grow I'd also like to put my efforts helping some bigger debian project. Well... How this fits the SC... Seems obvious, I'll try to explain: I want Debian to grow, to be used more and more in many different areas, I can help for what my experience in some of those areas. Being used means users are to happy with Debian. Other than that, I absolutely agree Debian has to stay free, I 'm convinced about the fact that the progress is absolutely related to knowledge sharing, in software development this means publicly available code and expecially ideas, algorithms... I start using linux at the University in Verona, Italy, in 1994/5 without being aware of the FS/OS. A couple of years later when I had my first home computer I had the possibility to better understand what GNU/Linux is. Again, I think this obvious in scientific communities to share one's knowledge. I want to volunteer to give my contribution in a shared environment. I chose Debian because it meets my ideas and we are going the same direction." Micah Anderson <micah> "What I particularly like about the Debian Social Contract is that it is a contract explicitly made between Debian and the Free Software community. This contract ensures that the elements of the Debian system that are distributed will be done so with an intentionality towards preserving and propogating Free Software, and the freedom inherant therein. It is an assurance to the upstream developers that their software, their hard work, their ideals which compose their motiviation and beliefs for making this software, will not be corrupted, misused, co-opted or otherwise diluted in the packaging, distribution and work involved in the Debian project. While Free Software is packaged and distributed by other distributions which do not have a social contract, the Debian social contract, and the DFSG, is what makes Debian unique and enables upstream developers to have the freedom to develop in a safe haven, or open space. It provides a space where the freedom imbued in each piece of free software is encouraged to grow, rather than be stifled, in a community devoted to the very fundamental ideals which comprise its elements. It is the base by which all aspects of the Debian project are able to flourish, instead of being a project motivated by some other underlying foundation (such as proftit, service, etc.), it is instead motivated and driven by the same ideals that comprise the software by which it is composed. It inspires growth and revitilization back into the upstream software which is beneficial to Debian, but also to the greater community of Free Software. The fact that Debian makes this explicit that it is part of a community that gives back to itself in maintaining the freedom of its packages, and working in an open and transparant way is very powerful and has been the primary reason why I choose Debian over any other GNU/Linux distribution or any of the BSDs." Florian Ernst <florian> "I was born on September, the 25th, 1977 in Detmold, Germany, as the second of (later) four sons in my family. [...] After finishing school and social service (mandatory) I started to study mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, but had to realize how I fooled myself into believing this could work out and had to reorientate with respect to my future career. Some lessons in philosophy, macro- and microeconomics later I finally settled down on japanology, psychology and sociology which I'm still studying today, slowly approaching my master degree now and all this time being accompanied by my (now) fiancée. [...] Back in Germany I installed Debian in March, the 17th, 2003. I can tell for sure, as this was basically the only Debian installation I've ever done... Since then I explored the system and read a lot, including lurking on the Debian mailinglists. On June, the 16th, 2003 I couldn't keep my mouth shut and started to post to the mailinglists. Somehow I didn't really manage to stop doing so... ;) But over time this proved not to be enough so I started to do some real work for Debian, and that's how I finally came here to NM." The longer text he provided about himself can be found at http://ernst.uni-hd.de/debian/myintro.asc -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
