Ubuntu Wiki

About Me

I've been involved in free and open source software for quite awhile, having worked on various modules in the GNOME stack. These days I'm primarily involved in GTK+, where I've contributed a number of features and bug fixes. Previously I worked for Medsphere Systems Corporation where I worked on GTK-based medical software called OpenVista, and I worked a lot on fixing GTK+, and its Win32 backend in particular.

Now I work for Canonical, where I'm a member of the Desktop Experience team.

What I've Done

I joined Canonical late in the Jaunty cycle, but managed to contribute a number of patches to applications to improve the NotifyOSD usability. A few of the applications I patched were gnome-power-manager, Transmission, gnome-mount, bluez-gnome, and Banshee.

I am a long-time Ubuntu user, and even before joining Canonical I was very proud of having work I did make it into the Ubuntu releases. The one I'm most proud of so far is 56070, which seems to have made some impression in the Intrepid release.

What I'm Currently Doing

• Writing xsplash, the new transition effect for Karmic
• Soon to work on styling and effects for gdm greeter for Karmic
• Working on new morphing/transitional gtk widget effects that might make it into Karmic
• Working on GTK+ 3.0 related tasks

What I Want To Do

• Continue to improve the desktop and the toolkit in terms of usability, performance, and sexiness.
• I want to create an "edge" PPA for GTK+ packages to provide a better bridge between the Ubuntu community and upstream GTK+ development. I think we're in a better position to contribute upstream in the form of testing new features before major releases than any other distribution, and all we need is this PPA and some kind of community organization for the effort, which I would like to do.
• I'm working with Ken Wimer and others from the design team on new theme stuff for Ubuntu in the future, and the GTK+ parts that I'm working on for this will probably exist in the above PPA. Right now this includes developing a new branch of GTK+ to implement client-side window decorations. But once the theming/design efforts really launch then I'd like to have a community presence to be able to blog about what we're doing and get others in the community who are interested in theming involved. At the moment theming efforts are moving slowly, but they still feel a little too limited to Canonical, and once it gets moving more I want us to include more of the community.

Contact Information

Email: bratsche@gnome.org Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~bratsche Blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/bratsche IRC: bratsche on irc.canonical.com, irc.freenode.net, and irc.gimp.org