I, Charlie Smotherman, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I am 48 years old and I live in the United States. I have been married to my sweetheart for the last 17 years and I have 4 children, and 9 grandchildren with one on the way. I served a 10 year stint in the U.S Army, after the Army I went back to college and obtained a degree in Nursing and soon after passed the Texas Registered Nurse Certification Exam. At which time I was issued my Registered Nurses License, and have since had 10+ years in the Intensive Care Unit taking care of open heart surgery patients until the stress almost killed me (literally). I now work part time at a local nursing home, which gives me some free time to play with grandchildren and work on Ubuntu. I am the current Maintainer for Ampach, Ampache-Themes, Quickplay, and Upnp-Inspector in Debian. I am also listed as the Co-Maintainer for Coherence and Pylirc.

My Ubuntu story

I came to know Ubuntu when Dapper was released. After becoming frustrated trying to install one of my favorite pieces of software, Ampache, on that OS from Redmond, I decided to give Ubuntu a try. I was so impressed with the easy of installation and that it was a piece of cake to install Ampache, I never looked back. I have since converted my wife from windows to Ubuntu (no an easy task in itself), along with several of my friends.

I am by no means an IT professional, nor do I work in the IT industry, I am just an avid Debian/Ubuntu user that has the desire to give back to a community that has given me so much.

I am a very active member in the Ampache and Coherence upstream projects, on IRC and in the user forums helping to answer Debian/Ubuntu related questions and staying abreast of changes.

My involvement

I have been involved with Ubuntu since Hardy when I requested the first sync of Ampache from Debian to Ubuntu. As time goes along I have been more and more active in Ubuntu as shown by the number of packages that I have touched durnig the karmic cycle. Yes most of these are sync requests, however they corrected packages that FTBFS in karmic. I would have done more but I had to make some last minute changes to Coherence, Rhythmbox, Totem and Ampache. Due to a change in Python-coherence the Rhythmbox Coherence plugin and Totum Coherence Plugins needed to be updated. Ampache required an update due to a possible sql injection vulnerability, which was corrected in version 3.5.1-1ubuntu2. Thanks to Raphael Geissert (Debian Security Team) another security vulnerability, the misuse of REQUEST for write operations rather than POST, and has been corrected in version 3.5.3. I am preparing an SRU to provide this fix for Ampache in Karmic.

So far in the Lucid cycle I have been active doing merges/syncs, I try to perform at least one or two a day, more if time permits. I have found switching from MoM and using Bzr to be somewhat of a challenge as I am not use to using it, but not impossible.

I am an active member in PAPT and PMPT, where DktrKranz and POX have done most of my uploads in debian.

Things I could do better

There is always room for improvement. I am continually reading documentation and learning as much about Debian/Ubuntu as I can.

Plans for the future

My ultimate goal is to become a Debian Developer, this way I can be of more help to both Debian and Ubuntu. IMHO obtaining MOTU'ship will assist me in my endeavor.

I have applied to the mentoring program for one mentoring slot. Teaching new upcoming developers the "Ubuntu way" seems to be a natural progression in my journey towards MOTU.

What I like least in Ubuntu

About the only things that I dislike about Ubuntu is developers who do not submit their patches upstream to Debian.

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@.

Endorsements

Luca Falavigna

General feedback

I sponsored serveral packages for Charlie, both in Ubuntu and in Debian. He has always been very responsive to address my comments and he learned a lot during these months. Recent uploads were perfect from my point of view, so I believe Charlie will be a great addiction to the MOTUs.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've been primary sponsor for many of Charlie's packages, he knows very well how to handle Python packaging, and his skills will be very helpful to improve quality and reduce deltas with Debian.

ScottKitterman

General feedback

Shortly before the Karmic release I sponsored or ack'ed syncs for seven packages for porthose. Six of the seven were absolutely without issue. pysvn was the seventh. It was a bit complex, but he did a great job. I didn't have to explain exactly how to solve problems with the package, just give some hints and he took care of it. I trust him to get stuff right, ask if he's unsure, and go the extra mile to fix stuff when he breaks it (we all do it eventually, it's a when, not an if for anyone who's doing much of anything).

Specific Experiences of working together

Of the packages I've sponsored, pysvn was the most memorable. porthose was great to work with and got the job doing. He'd have done better with more experience with Python extensions, but then woudn't we all. I have no reservations. His jumping in near the end and getting stuff fixed that needed fixing was great. I also regularly see him active in Debian Python circles. Bonus points for that.

Benjamin Drung

General feedback

I have sponsored at least seven sync requests. They were all well explained and I had no objections or suggestions.

fabrice_sp

General feedback

I've been sponsoring more than 40 uploads from Charlie, most of them, sync or merges. The diversity of packages I sponsored shows that Charlie has the general technical knowledge to be a good MOTU.

The only point that would require some improvements is that some debdiff contained some undesired changes or lost some changes. In that cases, the reactivity of Charlie was very good, and it was very nice to work with him.

Specific Experiences of working together

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gallery/+bug/484163 or https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/slingshot/+bug/444955 are examples of what could have been done better

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glui/+bug/488964 or https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ropemacs/+bug/493472 are examples of good work done

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

General feedback

As I said in all other applications of Charlie Smotherman, I'm very happy with his work and look forward to seeing him as a MOTU.

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== <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.''

CategoryPerPackageUploaderApplication