I, Paul Gevers, apply for upload rights for packages winff, daisy-player, ebook-speaker and cacti. [Update 22 July 2012: added cacti]

Name Paul Gevers
Launchpad Page ~paul-climbing
Wiki Page Elbrus

Who I am

I'm Paul Gevers, a Development Engineer at ASML. I have been using Debian and later Ubuntu for some 10 years now and decided that I should contribute to the open source community.

I am Debian Developer since a few months.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

I got involved in 2007 when I first started to help with bug triaging. Because I found that quite often I didn't know what to ask for, I started looking around what else could be done. That is when I started looking into packaging. Because my own needs for software are limited, I decided to look for packages that other people had requested. First I tried to package the miktex library and ksquirrel, but both sources had issues. Then I found winff. Because the preferred way of packaging software for Ubuntu is the Debian route, I got winff into Debian and started maintaining it. Because winff needs fpc and lazarus to build, I have kept an eye on the bugs in those packages and forwarded bugs to the Debian maintainer if appropriate. I did quite some work for bug 275688, but that was finally handled quite unsatisfactory. After packaging winff, I decided to see if I could do some QA on orphaned packages and I did a lot of work on improving lesstif (I even got commit rights to upstream for that) and did take over the nedit package. Both last packages were somewhat less interesting in the end because upstream for lesstif is dead and the bugs in nedit really come from the lesstif package.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

As stated above, I work mainly on packages in Debian, but I keep an eye on the bugs in Ubuntu and fix things where I can. Several examples:

• NMU of lesstif2 maintenance Doing QA for a major library is not always easy. But seeing it through is rewarding.

• bug 529469 Memory leak in lazarus interesting cooperation with somebody else interested.

• bug 368898 Winff update

• bug 304249 & 871332 FFmpeg got soname bump of it's libraries effecting winff

Areas of work

Doing the maintenance work for lesstif in Debian, I decided to contact upstream (although dead coding wise) and was able to get commit rights; to implement patches and other improvement directly in upstream. For winff I do have upstream commit rights, which I use to fix bugs. Furthermore I am mainly involved in triaging of bugs and communicating with users on the forum. I host the winff.org web site for upstream. For daisy-player and ebook-speaker I communicate a lot with the writer to get him improve his code to such a level that it could be uploaded to Debian.

Things I could do better

I want to improve my debugging skills. I really don't have enough knowledge of how find coding problems on my own. So far I have been able to help others help packages forward, but if I had to do it alone...

Plans for the future

General

I have applied for the status of Debian Developer and finished the process recently. As I use Ubuntu at home, I am constantly reporting problems when I encounter them (if they seem new). [Update 22 July 2012: update info on DD status]

What I like least in Ubuntu

The fact that Kubuntu will not be officially supported after 12.04.

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

Stefano Rivera

General feedback

Only sponsored a very small number of uploads although spread over a year and they were in good shape. They were all sponsored without any issue at all.

Specific Experiences of working together

Areas of Improvement

More work is always welcome. And if we can beat packages into shape before the final release sprint, it's always welcome

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

General feedback

I just sponsored two merges, but they were well done and didn't require any additional work. I'd trust Paul with upload rights to all of the packages mentioned above.

Specific Experiences of working together

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/winff/+bug/418765

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/winff/+bug/518396

Stefan Potyra

General feedback

Even if it is some time, I still recall that there is a relationship between Paul and lazarus. Given the time span in between, this is quite notable.

I recall that the changes I sponsored were in good technical shape.

I fully recommend Paul for the PPU permissions requested.

Specific Experiences of working together

* bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/525523: lazarus: great from a technical

• POV, needed only minor tweakings. (The "patch" aftermath -- "patch" itself being broken on sparc -- is a different story unrelated to the work on lazarus)

* bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/529469: lazarus: Excellent work!

Areas of Improvement

Ubuntu needs more people like you, being tightly integrated into upstream development and with a great technical expertise. Go for Ubuntu Developer, not just for PPU!

Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

General feedback

I've only sponsored two uploads for Paul, but I have confidence in his abilities. I fully support his application for PPU rights.

Specific Experiences of working together

Areas of Improvement

I'd love to see Paul become a full Ubuntu Developer.

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

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 ===

CategoryPerPackageUploaderApplication