Who I am

My name is Christian and currently I am doing an advanced education in tax law. I studied law and so I am not in touch with IT-business in my professional life. Ubuntu and free software is my hobby and I like to contribute as much as my time allows.

My Ubuntu story

I am using Kubuntu for several years now and I started my "Ubuntu story" with giving support in the german speaking Kubuntu community (http://www.kubuntu-de.org). I am still doing this, because I think it is important to see support in our language.

Some months ago I started my packaging career and since then I have been contributing internationally.

My involvement

My first involvement was doing some plasma-widget packages. After that I joined the Kubuntu "Ninjas" team and helped packaging KDE4*.

I am proud of packaging Bilbo, which was not so easy for a beginner and took some time. Bilbo is now renamed to Blogilo and part of KDEpim, so it is not longer in the archive. My latest packages were minitube and kfritz I worked together with upstream to make these applications distributable and I am proud of upstream author being happy with us :).

http://flavio.tordini.org/minitube-is-in-ubuntu-repositories

Currently I am working on packaging a good Choqok for Lucid and as I'm in touch with it's developer, I plan to get mdic (another project of the Choqok dev) into 10.04. (Unfortunately postponed to 10.10, because of several problems)

As I said before, there is still more room for learning, but I think I am ready now for joining the MOTU team. So this is my application.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• plasma-widget-windowslist (replaced by KDE Plasma Addons)
• plasma-widget-stasks (removed, unmaintained)
• plasma-widget-fancytasks
• plasma-widget-daisy
• plasma-widget-plasmaboard (replaced by KDE Plasma Addons)
• bilbo/Boglio
• minitube
• kfritz
• Helped packaging KDE 4.*

Areas of work

I work with the Kubuntu team. I have already fixed some bugs, for example bug 409407 (which was fixed upstream before it succeeded) and bug 411020 (not my patch of course, I am not a coder). I really should do more bugfixing, especially in this state of the release cycle. Unfortunately I am a bit busy with my real life these days, but that should change, soon.

Things I could do better

I would like to do more bug triage. Packaging is fun, but a distribution lives from fixing relevant bugs as fast as possible and handle irrelevant bugs as good as we can to keep the user satisfied.

General

What I like least in Ubuntu

It would be great, if the process of getting new packages to Ubuntu would be easier. REVU is good, but a lot of packages are not uploaded, because no one has the time to review it. I tried to help some beginners lately and it was not very easy to explain the whole process. It is confusing that new packages have to go to REVU and for updates a bug report is needed. I think it would be good to be consequent and only use one method.

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@.

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Endorsements

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

Jonathan Thomas

General feedback

I've sponsored several of Christian's packages, including several of his fancytask and plasma-widget-daisy updates. I've also revu'd several of his new packages, such as his minitube package. He's a very thorough person with an attention to detail. He knows when to ask questions and takes feedback very well, from what I have seen. He'd make a very good MOTU.

Specific Experiences of working together

We've worked together a lot with the packaging of KDE for KDE releases, overall a good chap.

Areas of Improvement

Nothing that won't come with experience. That being said, he is perfectly experienced and capable to be a MOTU. All I'm saying is that we can always learn something new.

JonathanRiddell

General feedback

neversfelde has done a bunch of work with the regular KDE releases as part of the Kubuntu Ninjas team. His packaging is accurate and thorough.

HaraldSitter

General feedback

Sponsored some all new packages and a couple of updates. Christian always exhibits great care and attention to detail. In the early days he had quite some problems with getting debian/copyright straight, which seems to have improved a lot (still not perfect yet though). Nonetheless I have rarely seen problems with his updates to KDE packages, of which he has done a lot as part of his Ninja work. Definitely MOTU quality we have here

Specific Experiences of working together

Mostly we have been working together via REVU, where he was very responsive and willing to improve his style.

Areas of Improvement

As with most of us, attention to proper licensing and distributability of the source package could be improved. Also, paying more attention to implications of changes would be nice (i.e. spending more time on QA). Most recently a minor change that was only done to make lintian happy, caused rather annoying problems upon package upgrades.

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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.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===

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CategoryMOTUApplication