I, Emmet Hikory, apply for Ubuntu Core Developer.

Who I am

I'm a consultant living in Tokyo, typically engaging in human resources, information infrastructure, legacy migration, and software development projects. I've been using UNIX on and off since 1984, various linux variants fairly regularly since 1993, and have definite opinions about how things should work behind the scenes. I believe in the inherent value of free code, alignment of copyright to common patent terms, and the ability of collections of individuals to band together to create wonder.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

I added Ubuntu sources to my once-potato desktop around the time of the Warty release, and almost immediately became involved in user support (often as a simple matter of barter to solve my problems). During the Breezy development cycle, I got more heavily involved in bugsquad, including leading a Bug Day (in those days they lasted 49 hours, and the developers stopped by #ubuntu-bugs and would accept bugs to be fixed), and started working to address bugs thorough submission of patches and a MIR. Running up to Dapper I got even more involved adding .desktop files for lots of applications, creating menu icons, merges, library transitions, porting applications to amd64, and miscellaneous other MOTU tasks. With some interruptions due to external factors, I became increasingly involved both with MOTU and with documentation and formalisation of MOTU processes, and once accepted as MOTU began to work more on sponsoring, developer training, reducing our delta with Debian, and tying to keep the archive RCbug free. I later was selected as a member of MOTU Council, the Asia & Oceania Regional Membership Board, and the Developer Membership Board. I've been involved with a number of flavours, including Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu MID, Ubuntu UMPC, and Ubuntu Netbook. I've also spent a fair amount of time working on the armel, lpia, and powerpc ports. I currently find myself with 2-3 weeks worth of pending work I'd like to have already done, largely in the areas of process improvement, tools improvement, package and patch review, and general distribution quality work (especially for less favoured ports).

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Some of my recent work in main includes:

• Getting plymouth to work on ports (LP: #507765)

• Calming onboard dependencies (LP: #524148)

• Sorting python-apt to understand ports properly (LP: #531876)

The work I've done in lucid of which I'm proudest is in ubuntu-dev-tools, specifically firstly enabling the use of foreign armel chroots in pbuilder-dist and mk-sbuild-lv, and secondly building on Scott Moser's work to allow mk-sbuild to work for arbitrary schroot types.

Areas of work

I tend to spend most of my time assisting others with whatever issues they are encountering attempting to do their own work, sometimes new developers and sometimes seasoned developers. I do NBS, general ports-enabling, and tools work when I can, and tend to just go fix bugs that bother me when I have a chance. I'd like to spend enough time on input and output devices to enable all my hardware, but fear that even could I dedicate all my time to that, my acquisitive urge would outpace my ability. I'm a supporting developer for any flavour that requests my help, but I prefer to work on Studio and anything targeting the truly small form factors (<5" screens), as these are areas where I derive personal enjoyment from actually using the software.

Things I could do better

I could be a lot better at following up on stuff: I'm often distracted and rely on working in teams to ensure that what I'm doing isn't lost. I need to file more bugs, rather than adding them to my TODO list, and I ought get better at TODO management, as things are often lost. I hear good things about diurnal rhythms.

Plans for the future

General

Some of my medium-term targets are to create better tools for on-demand remote dispatched builds, try to bring pbuilder and sbuild enough into alignment that common chroots can be used for tools that build on either interface, enable powerpc as a foreign build chroot architecture, attempt to leverage commonalities when running Ubuntu on multiple devices, and get a BCI X interface working well enough that I can usefully engage in hands-free computing. I'm not sure how quickly I'll get to any of these, as I tend to get lots more joy out of enabling others to do things effectively than out of chasing my own wishlist.

What I like least in Ubuntu

This is hard for me. I'm very opinionated, and there's lots of stuff I don't like to some degree or another. My current top two are 1) Discouraging users and developers from using or working on ports or packages not in main with a repeated refrain of "This is not supported": I think we could all do much better to say "That might work" or "I'm not sure that got enough testing", or "You may have to take some effort to get that configuration to work". Not only do we make ourselves more attractive to users by encouraging them to experiment with all of the software we make available, but these less-loved packages and architectures are good places to point people who want to do something, but don't know what. 2) The implication of a hierarchy between the different developer groups: we all work together, presumably on that which we wish to do, and many of us are in several groups. Prejudicing ourselves against one or other class of developer just because they happen to belong to some team is unfair: we can surely find individual causes for complaint (in which case we should address them so as to understand each other better and become a stronger team), or individual causes for respect (in which case we may ask each other for advice, regardless of team membership).

Comments

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

Endorsements

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

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

General feedback

I haven't sponsored a lot of changes for Emmet in the last cycles, but have worked on a variety of other things together with Emmet. One thing I'd like to note is his special attention to detail and great work with new contributors. I'm sure these assets will help him a lot as a core-dev.

Loïc Minier

General feedback

I didn't sponsor many packages for Emmet, but he participates in many discussions on planned changes where he showed a good understanding of the technical challenges at hand. I think it's kind of odd that he's not a core-dev yet, and he's careful enough that I don't mind him having upload access to the whole archive.

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 ===

CategoryCoreDevApplication