MOTUDeveloperApplication

This application was announced in the devel-permissions mailing list and was approved in the DMB meeting on 2022-04-04

I, Athos Ribeiro, apply for MOTU status within the Ubuntu community.

Name

Athos Ribeiro

Launchpad Page

~athos-ribeiro

Wiki Page

AthosRibeiro

I am applying because:

  • I will be working on PHP transitions. This will involve touching several packages in universe. Having upload rights and the ability to re-trigger autopkgtest tests will eliminate delays and reduce the amount of work re-directed to my teammates or other sponsors; and
  • it would allow me to be more helpful on the +1 maintenance work. While the MOTU status is not ideal for that matter, it is certainly helpful to help re-triggering tests when necessary and fixing issues in universe packages.

Who I am

I am a software engineer working on the Ubuntu Server team. In the Server team, I currently focus in maintaining the Ubuntu based OCI images shipped in DockerHub and in Amazon's Elastic Container Registry. For the kk cycle, I am taking over the server team's PHP maintenance duties and contributing with PostgreSQL MREs and overall packaging.

I have a Master's degree in CS from the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, where I am originally from and currently based in. That master's degree was focused on extending the work I performed as a guest researcher in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in Maryland, regarding source code static analysis and static analysis tools evaluation.

From 2018 to early 2021, I lived in the Czech Republic, while working for Red Hat, where I worked on the development and maintenance of a container image build system, which is also used by Fedora to build the images available in their registry. I come from a Python background and also have previous experience with RPM packaging both from my previous job and from contributions to the Fedora project.

My Ubuntu story

Ubuntu was the first distribution I have used. This was at school, during my bachelor degree, many years ago. After I started getting comfortable as a Ubuntu user, I started trying different distributions. In that process, I got involved with the Fedora community and did stick with it for the past few years.

Right before joining the Server team, I migrated most of my systems to Ubuntu, where I usually run the development version both on work, and personal use machines.

In December 2021, I was granted PPU rights for the Ubuntu Server package set. My previous application can be fount at AthosRibeiro/UbuntuServerDeveloperApplication.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Package Merges and Syncs

Bug Fixes and SRUs

Autopkgtest & DEP8

Milestones and Exceptions

+1 maintenance

Bug reports

Reviews

Snaps and OCIs

Misc

Work in progress

Areas of work

  • The Ubuntu Server package set
  • Ubuntu OCI images
  • Ubuntu OCI images QA
  • Snaps used to build Ubuntu OCI images

Things I could do better

  • Perform more reviews to help with the Server team workloads
  • Increase participation in Ubuntu mailing lists

Plans for the future

General

  • Improve the state of the art of Ubuntu OCI images.
  • Take over the PHP packages maintenance in the Ubuntu server team and in the distro in general.
  • Co-maintain PostgreSQL packages within the server team.
  • Keep working on package merges from Debian, specially for the Server team packages.
  • Triage and work on Server team related bugs, submitting SRUs when necessary.

What I like least in Ubuntu

Finding resources around may be difficult at times. For instance, if one does not keep track of their work and/or does not properly set fields in launchpad, compiling a list of work performed around Ubuntu, such as this one, may become a hard task. Working on both documentation and automation tools could help the community and decrease the efforts when one applies for membership.

Endorsements

As a sponsor, just copy the template below, fill it out and add it to this section.

Bryce Harrington

General feedback

I've been working with Athos since he joined the Ubuntu Server team, and have trust and confidence in his packaging judgement. Currently I'm helping him get up to speed on PHP packaging work and look forward to seeing his focus on these packages; his MOTU membership will improve the maintenance attention we can provide for the larger PHP ecosystem in universe, and will facilitate Athos' work towards a future application for CoreDev.

Specific Experiences of working together

As mentioned for his Packageset application, I've found his packaging work to be straightforward to review and sponsor. He's been taking on more complex merges, and doing a healthy amount of bug fixing work on server team packages. Athos has been giving high focus lately to OCI work with Sergio, which I'm less involved with, but from my outside observations I've admired Athos' attention to detail and speed of response with OCI.

Our team's also been re-triaging older bugs filed against Ubuntu Server packages. This is a bit tedious work to do, but Athos has stuck with it (not everyone has!) and shares much credit for helping us drain this backlog.

I've particularly appreciated *his* review on my own merge proposals of python and bash scripting. He identified good improvements to my coding style, in a very helpful and friendly manner. I love getting his reviews because they're insightful and always result in better quality code. Lately, he's also offered to assist in reviewing python changes for the git-ubuntu tool; the git ubuntu Python coding often involves some rather sophisticated Python language features, so I think he'll both learn a lot and be able to contribute some fresh insights to it.

Areas of Improvement

Athos is definitely on the right track taking on duties relating to the PHP transitions, which will give him ample experience dealing with API/ABI discrepancies, britney esoteria, circular dependencies, and other issues of similarly diabolical nature. As a veteran of a PHP transition effort he'll be in a great place for making a CoreDev application.

In addition to his packaging skills, I know he also harbors some good python development talents, and if that's an area of personal interest would encourage him to find ways to tap into them for toolsmithing, or as a collaborator on other existing python-based efforts. I'd love to collaborate with him on some tool work. Smile :-)

-- bryce 2022-03-11 17:17:20

Paride Legovini

General Feedback

I am familiar with Athos' work in the Server Team and I believe Athos has and exceeds the level of skills and trust to have MOTU upload righs right now.

Specific Experiences of working together

I personally worked with Athos in setting up testing and general QA work on the Ubuntu OCI images. While that's not "classic" packaging work, it allows me to say that Athos' work is technically excellent and follows the best practices across multiple domains.

I didn't sponsor any package from Athos, but I'm familiar with his packaging skills because of peer-review processes our team follows for uploads and merges. His contributions are of excellent quality and, perhaps more importantly, review rounds with Athos are always very constructive, both when he receives or gives review comments.

Athos' bug triage work shows he is an excellent member of the wider Ubuntu community.

Areas of Improvement

In the application Athos states that one of the reasons for applying for MOTU is being able to do more in +1 maintenance. That will offer plenty of opportunities to deal with more complex cases. This will build up enough contributions to confidently apply for Core Developer, for which Athos is already fully on track.

-- paride 2022-03-14 16:41:54

Sergio Durigan Junior

General Feedback

I have been working with Athos in the Ubuntu Server team, and I believe he is absolutely more than ready to have MOTU upload rights right now.

Specific Experiences of working together

I have personally worked closely with Athos in several areas, related and unrelated to Ubuntu, and I have always felt inspired by his technical excellence and attention to details. I have reviewed MPs and debdiffs for him, sponsored merges and SRUs, and we had many opportunities to discus bugs and technical issues affecting a variety of Ubuntu packages, both in main and universe. Athos has always demonstrated to be a professional, high skilled engineer who not only focuses on the issue at hand but also sees the bigger picture and understands how the different parts of Ubuntu interact with each other.

Areas of Improvement

Athos is definitely on the right track to become a Core Developer, which should happen very soon in my opinion. I am excited to see his work on the PHP ecosystem this next cycle; I believe it will consolidate all the great things that he has already been doing and will certainly allow him to take the next step to become a Core Developer.

-- sergiodj 2022-03-15 16:30:34

Simon Chopin

General feedback

I've been working with Athos both as a Foundations team member and a MOTU sponsor. I believe Athos would be a strong addition to the MOTU ranks. I'm specifically impressed by his rigorous work and attention to details.

Specific Experiences of working together

I had the task of merging the python-debian package which had a delta introduced by Athos to support the zstd compression algorithm. In this, I had the chance to see how much work he put into it, not just producing some quality code in the delta, but also producing an alternative implementation to better fit the upstream code.

I also sponsored some packages for him, mostly around the PHP transition. The only case that could have gone a bit better is LP: #1964514 where the root cause of the FTBFS wasn't correctly identified at first, and the initial patch didn't actually fix the problem.

Areas of Improvement

Athos perhaps needs to work on better matching the archive setup for his local tests before upload? But that's really reaching Smile :)

-- -- schopin 2022-03-21 09:58:25

Comments

If you'd like to comment, but are not the applicant or a sponsor, do it here. Don't forget to sign with @SIG@.

TEMPLATE

== <SPONSORS NAME> ==
=== General feedback ===
## Please fill us in on your shared experience. (How many packages did you sponsor? How would you judge the quality? How would you describe the improvements? Do you trust the applicant?)

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
''Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.''
## Full list of sponsored packages can be generated here:
##  https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi
=== Areas of Improvement ===

CategoryMOTUApplication

AthosRibeiro/MOTUDeveloperApplication (last edited 2022-04-11 16:13:42 by bryce)